


It Gets Better

by ChapstickLez, Googlemouth



Series: 'Shipping Up To Boston [2]
Category: Rizzoli & Isles
Genre: Crime, Drama, F/F, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:22:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChapstickLez/pseuds/ChapstickLez, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Googlemouth/pseuds/Googlemouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When four teenaged boys commit suicide, it's up to the team of Rizzoli, Korsak and Frost to solve the mystery. But when everyone reveals uncomfortable truths, how will Jane and Maura's relationship survive?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Taylor Lautner

**Author's Note:**

> **  
>  _  
>  **Rizzoli & Isles**   
>  _   
>  **   
>  **belongs to Tess Gerritsen, Janet Tamaro, TNT, and the host of writers, producers, cast, and crew who create the show we love to watch. We are not any of those people.**
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> **Spoilers for Seasons One and Two AND the books. Rated M for mature topics (not sex scenes), murder, religion, and language.**  
>  **The concept for the story was born late one night, when we were emailing, wish that the show would tackle this sort of subject on their own, in their own impressively gay eye-sex way. Since they (probably) won't, we will. I am phenomenally grateful that Googlemouth agreed to help me. It's immeasurably better with her help. The title is taken directly from the "It Gets Better" campaign, which we personally feel is important. Kids need to know that they're okay, and they're not alone. But we'll let Jane and Maura explain it better. If you or someone you know is being bullied, please stand up for them. Look into[itgetsbetter.com](http://itgetsbetter.com) and [thetrevorproject.com](http://thetrevorproject.com) and talk to someone. You're not alone, and we love you just the way you are. **
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> **Also, I'm not Catholic but I know some really awesome ones who are totally fine with the whole gay thing. They know who we're writing about in this story, and why it can't be sugarcoated. Dignity/Boston is a real place, and by far not the only gay-welcoming Catholic Church in the US.**
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> **Co-written by Chapsticklez and Googlemouth. You can find us on Twitter as @chapsticklez and @Googlemouth.**

_Alone in a dark room, a young boy in his early teens typed on his computer. He clicked the mouse and took a shaky breath, shoving his curly blond hair out of his face. His hand trembled slightly as a green light flicked on at the top of his laptop._

_"Hi." His voice was quiet, as if afraid he would be overheard. "My name is Brandon Thorne, and I'm gay." Brandon coughed a little. "I'm sending this video out there because I want you guys to know it gets better. That you can-" Brandon hiccuped a tear and closed his eyes. "That you can make it. That all those people telling you you're worthless, they're wrong. They're-" His young voice broke, and he coughed as if to cover it up. "They're wrong. God doesn't make garbage. You're not garbage and neither am I. It sucks right now, but it gets better. That's what the Trevor Project wants you to know. Join your GSA, your Gay-Straight Alliance, at school. Start one if there isn't one. Find some friends or something. They've got to be out there somewhere, right? It gets better."_

_Again he stopped, and this time he couldn't go on. His nose ran, and the tears he tried to stifle turn into hiccup-studded sobs. "I have to believe it gets better, because I really don't think it can get any worse. If it does, I don't think I can... You know, screw it. I_ can't _do this. It_ doesn't _get better! I can't live like this anymore." He looked off to one side and ..._

* * *

"Hut, hut, HIKE!" shouted Tommy and he took three quick steps back. His older sister took off, running straight out. "Come on," he muttered, as his brother grappled with the Talucci's eldest. "Come on, Janie, break free!"

Giovanni was covering Jane, however, and as one of the few guys with height on her, he took advantage of that. And of trying to cop a feel. "Damn it, Giovanni! Stop it!" snapped Jane, and she shoved him with the flat of her palms. "Tommy! Throw it!"

"Yes!" cheered Tommy, hurling the football down the yard, a split second before the eldest Talucci tackled him into the ground.

As Tommy and Frankie struggled to their feet, Jane had the ball but had stopped running. _Ah no,_ thought Tommy, as his sister pointed the ball at Giovanni, who shouted about unfair play. Jane's phone was out. "Shut up for a minute, guys," she demanded, and Tommy groaned. All he wanted was a day to play with his sister, when she wasn't off at work, or with her LLBFF (whatever the hell _that_ meant), Maura. Who'd turned him down. "Yo, Frankie, come on." She flipped the football to Giovanni and hustled back up the lawn to Tommy, "Sorry, kiddo, we caught a case."

The police officer siblings hauled Tommy to his feet, hugged him, and piled into Jane's car. "This is why we never ask them to play," grumbled the younger Talucci brother.

"Last time, Jane left in the middle of a Red Sox game!"

Tommy shook his head at his siblings, "Okay, we can do two-a-side. Giovanni, you're with me."

* * *

Standing by the body of a young man, a boy really, and an empty bottle of prescription pills, Jane felt her gut roil. "Damn it," muttered Korsak. "This is the fourth one." Chris Anderson's face was a disturbing, doughy mess, instead of what should have been a softly sculptured, attractive boy on the cusp of individuality. His short brown hair fell in a gentle sweep across his forehead, giving him an expression of wry humor. If he wasn't dead.

Four dead kids, none of them older than sixteen, all in the same part of town. In a sick, sick way, Jane wished it was a serial killer and not the apparent suicides she'd been faced with. Jane shook her head and called over to the CSU techs, "Bring the laptop back to the station." To Korsak she added, "Maybe Frost can get something off it."

"The last three had nothin," grumbled Korsak, and he opened the bedroom door to go find Barry.

Jake Graff, Robby Auson, James Smith and now Chris Anderson.

The last three didn't leave any information on their computers, let alone the fancy Android phone their new victim had. So far they'd had two kids take pills of different types, one hung himself, and the fourth (which was the first) stepped in front of an MTA train on his way to summer school. In every case, the kids' friends, siblings, and parents had no idea what was going on. There was no reported bullying at school or at home, and none of the kids showed evidence of abuse (according to Maura).

Jane's eyes roamed over the room. There were posters of Lady Gaga pinned meticulously behind the computer, that Adam Lambert kid from American Idol, and some other people Jane had no idea who they were, thus making her feel old. She looked up and saw glow-in-the-dark stick on stars, however, and smiled in spite of herself. It made Jane think of the pink canopy bed (now sold to torment some other child), and her own childhood. In contrast to those modern pop stars and the cutting edge computer, the kid had a carved wooden crucifix up on the wall by his door.

Her inspection of the room was interrupted by the staccato heels of Dr. Maura Isles. This was neither the time nor the place to embrace her. The relatively recent miracle of having a relationship with Maura still surprised Jane every day. Thankfully, Maura understood Jane's need to keep things under wraps right now, and had been amusingly deflective when answering questions like where she got that hickey. Even with no public expression of affection, Maura lowered Jane's blood pressure just being there.

"Doctor," Jane said evenly.

"Detective," replied Maura, her lips curling up in a smile that Jane hoped no one else noticed. Their eyes were going to give them away one day.

"It looks like another suicide." Jane stepped around to the other side of the bed, letting Maura inspect the body.

Maura picked up the pill bottle. "Oxycodone." She showed the label to Jane. "It would have depressed his breathing to the point of unconsciousness, depending on how many he took." Pushing back one eyelid, the medical examiner frowned. "No petechial hemorrhaging. Overdose is most likely, depending on how many pills were left. That is, if this is the cause of death, which you know I won't be able to determine until I get him back to the lab. In fact, I'd like to point out that just finding the bottle nearby doesn't guarantee that he took any at all."

Without referring to her notes or rising to the easy bait of Maura's refusal to assume even the slightest or most obvious of details, Jane replied, "The mother said the bottle was full. She had it refilled yesterday." The label clearly stated that there were a hundred tablets.

From the doorway, Korsak said "That seems like a lot to me, so I asked the father. Turns out the wife has cancer." Korsak flipped open his notebook. "Lung cancer from asbestos. Before she worked on the Big Dig she was converting old skyscrapers."

Their third partner, Barry Frost, suggested, "Maybe the kid couldn't handle his mom dying on him." Three detectives and one medical examiner looked at the boy, as if he would answer. "Father Brophy's with the parents right now."

Maura's eyes flicked towards Jane, then back to her work, expressively... non-expressive. "I'll finish preliminary work and then have the body taken back to the morgue," said the forensic pathologist with a strange quietness, growing more guarded somehow, though Jane was at a loss to describe, even to herself, why she thought of it in those terms. The alterations to posture and facial expression were so minute that she could not have cataloged them, but her famous gut told her something was hinky here. Brophy was a good guy, as far as Jane knew, but maybe for Maura there was a reason to dislike him. Had she attended one of his services and not found it to her liking? Had he mis-cited some Biblical reference in conversation, or maybe used faulty logic in a moment of impromptu exegesis? When the hell had she, Jane, learned the word exegesis?

Whatever. Not important right now. _Focus on the kid, Rizzoli_.

"Did the parents okay the autopsy?" Contrary to the misinformation perpetrated by fiction books and movies, autopsies were not required by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. At Barry's nod, Jane pulled off her gloves. "We're out, Maura." In passing, she touched Maura's shoulder, trying to silently ask if the doctor was all right. Maura's smile didn't reach her eyes, but she nodded at Jane. "Frankie, stick around till Maura's done, okay?" she murmured to her brother under her breath, looking back at Maura.

Downstairs, the parents were huddled on a couch. The house had looked perfectly normal. With a pang, Jane realized it reminded her of her parent's house, and not just due to the location - they were in her family's old Revere neighborhood. In a chair beside the parents sat Father Daniel Brophy, the go-to priest for the precinct. Jane liked Father Brophy, he gave off the same comforting aura of solidity and strength her childhood priest had. She was glad the tall, quietly reassuring priest had come, and not the more vocal ones.

Brophy was leaning forward, his earnest intensity doing wonders to calm the parents. He looked up at Jane as she walked into the room, dark eyebrows lifting up in silent benediction. He looked like a slightly younger John Slattery, or maybe Anderson Cooper. "Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, I'm sorry for your loss," Jane said smoothly, taking up the chair opposite Brophy. The duty of giving sympathy while still hunting for information from the bereaved was not one of Jane's favorites. "I don't know if you're aware, but Chris is the fourth young boy of about this age to have taken his own life recently."

The mother, a formerly husky woman now shriveled by cancer, hunched her shoulders. "Do you suspect some kind of foul play?" Her voice held that same edge Jane attributed to construction workers. The husband, an equally worn man of about Korsak's age, though still with the shoulders and fitness of a blue collar worker, took his wife's hand tenderly.

"We're still working that out," admitted Jane. "Do you know if Chris knew any of these boys?" She passed over headshots, school photos, of the three other boys. Mrs. Anderson glanced at them and shook her head, while her husband studied them more carefully. Neither recognized anyone. "Maybe in something after school?"

"No, Chris did soccer, though. I don't think any of those boys were on the team. Maybe a school he played against?" offered the husband. Dutifully, Jane took down the note, though she already knew the other boys didn't play soccer. "He was also in some group, not student government, something else, I don't know what."

Brophy and Jane shared a look, and the priest asked, non-judgmental, "You didn't know what group he was in?"

The parents looked chagrined. "We knew he was in a group, but he was doing so well in school, and his teachers said everything was fine. Things were fine at home. We wanted to show him we trusted him to make his own choices and come to us if he needed help." The father sighed and wiped his face. "I should have paid attention better." Patting his hand, the wife assured him they couldn't have known.

Taking down some more information, and leaving her card, as well as one for a good crime scene cleaning company, Jane stepped outside to breath fresh air. Maura had not yet finished with the body, but the evidence techs were filing out. Soon enough, her goofy genius girlfriend would come down, in her elegant 'these are my crime solving clothes' dress. Had she been anywhere else, Jane would have smiled. Instead, she gave Frost a couple pointers, and let him drive off, saying she'd be there after she talked to Brophy, who didn't keep her waiting long.

"Detective," nodded the priest. "I wish we could meet more often, and under better circumstances."

They shook hands, warmly. "Maybe if you hadn't moved to that big church down the street."

Brophy laughed, a welcoming sort of man. He'd left one of the larger Catholic congregations in downtown, in order to work at the much smaller Paulist Center. A pretty hip and groovy Catholic church, as those things went. "How's your mother?"

"You heard about the divorce? Dad's in Florida. Frankie thinks he has a girlfriend." Jane rolled her eyes. "Ma's doing better, though. She's got a job at the station and she's living with my best friend, if you can believe it."

"That sounds ... " He stopped and groped for the right word. "That sounds horrible," Brophy finally laughed. "You must see her all the time!"

Jane laughed as well, "I'd kill her if I wasn't on her side about the whole thing." They chatted a little more about Jane's family, including Brophy's surprise message to pass along to Tommy.

"By the way, Father Crowley wanted me to tell you that Tommy's welcome at his parish any time."

"After Tommy hit him with a _car_?" Jane was incredulous.

"We're big on forgiveness," Brophy deadpanned. "Especially for those who can't quite live up to perfection." There was a crinkle in his eyes that told Jane he was laughing inside. "Besides, I'd rather he came to Crowley's or my sermons. If we can get a habitual drinker, a felon, thief, adulterer, any kind of miscreant, it makes us feel like Marines, like we're really fighting the good fight. Plus, if he shows up at Crowley's masses, Crowley wins this round of Sinner Bingo." Jane smiled at the priest and promised she'd pass the message on to her felonious sibling. "I'm going to sit with the family a while more." He gently squeezed Jane's upper arm and went back into the house, promising to tell her if anything important came to light.

Yeah, Brophy was a great priest. They should all be like that.

* * *

Feet propped up on her desk, Jane stared at the case notes she'd entered into the computer. "This doesn't make any sense," she complained to her partners.

"Suicide doesn't make sense to me anyway," admitted Frost, staring at his own computer. "Why kill yourself?" Sitting at his, slightly separate, desk, Korsak said nothing. His silence was a little daunting. Frost quickly looked back at his desk, giving Jane a 'what the fuck?' look.

Jane at up and pulled out the photos. While everything was stored on the computer, sometimes it was just better to look at it physically. And if Korsak wanted to tell Frost what was on his mind, he would. She laid out the pictures of each boy's room and reviewed it. "Korsak, is Cavanaugh sure he wants us on this?"

The sergeant nodded, "Yeah. At four kids, it's startin' to look like a suicide pact."

"If these kids even knew each other. Different lives, different interests. They didn't have anything in common. Not even how they died." Jane tossed her set of photos onto her desk and groaned. Something was really wrong about the rooms, and she couldn't figure it out. "Two of these kids didn't decorate their rooms. It was like they were boarders, guests in their own homes." She knew she was having trouble getting a feel for the kids, since she'd only been able to personally visit two of the scenes. The further away she was from a victim, the harder it was to connect.

Across the desks, Jane and Korsak shared a look. "Maybe the doc has something we can use," he suggested, rotating his chair back and forth. "Gimme the pictures." Jane tossed the photos over and texted Maura, who replied she had the preliminary tox panels. No one else on the planet used perfect English spelling and grammar while texting. At least not every time. "This doesn't look right," said Korsak, pulling Jane out of her own head.

Both Frost and Jane came around to stand behind Korsak. "Looks like a kid's room," said Frost, as the images from their latest crime scene were spread out on Korsak's desk.

Korsak jabbed a finger at crime scene photos of each of the walls in turn. "There's my point. A kid decorates his room, right? What'd you have up in yours, Frost?"

"Posters. I had John Elway, couple of basketball players. Boyz II Men, and I don't want to hear another word about that. It was a phase."

"Yeah, and who else? Girls right?" pressed Korsak. Jane blinked and looked at the photos again.

Frost frowned at the question, "Yeah, a bunch of those. Halle Berry, Vivica Fox..." He looked again at the collection of photos as Korsak's point dawned on him. "This guy's got Gaga and Twilight."

"Not just any Twilight," corrected Jane. "The one with Taylor Lautner up front." Both men looked at her, surprised. "What? You got a problem with me knowing that?"

As her partners studiously looked away, Maura entered the bullpen, brandishing the toxicology results from Chris Anderson's death. "Definitely suicide," she confirmed grimly, handing Jane the results. "Premeditated. He ground the pills to a powder before ingesting them, which I verified when I ran his gut."

Frost looked surprised, "What good does that do?"

"Most pills are coated in order to time-release medication, and not overwhelm the body at once. By crushing the pills, you cause more of it to enter your bloodstream at once, increasing the effect. This often causes accidental death among the elderly, as they have trouble swallowing the larger pills." Maura looked over Jane's shoulder at the photos. "The oxycodone was extended-release, 10mg pills. It wouldn't take that many to kill someone his weight."

Handing the results to Frost, Jane watched her partner pale a little. "How'd he keep that many down?" She asked the medical examiner.

Maura replied absently, "Ginger and honey. You should try that, Barry." The general silence caused her to look up from the photos Maura had begun to peruse, and the open staring made her mentally review what she'd said. "No! I meant, try it next time you come to the morgue." She flushed; so did he, though fewer people noticed it because of his coffee complexion. She hadn't meant to draw attention once again to Frost's weak stomach and sensitivity to death.

Normally Jane would have smiled, but the pictures kept nagging at her. "The crucifix is weird, isn't it Korsak," Jane muttered, tapping the picture and bringing them back to the present. "He put up posters everywhere else, but he left that alone."

"I was thinkin' more of the weird posters," admitted Korsak. "I'd have pegged it as a girl's room. Too clean."

Jane snorted, "Ask my Ma, and it's too clean for _any_ teenager's room."

Put out, Maura objected, "My room was very clean." Jane smiled at her, shaking her head. "What?"

In for a penny... Jane sighed and pointed out the obvious to her girlfriend. "You had a maid."

"That's immaterial. My parents insisted that she not clean my room. They wanted me to be self-sufficient," Maura replied, primly, her haughtiness on full blast, until she distracted herself with her own squeal. "Oh, Taylor Lautner! He's the _cute_ one." She pointed at the photos on Korsak's desk. The men did not fix Maura with the same look Jane had gotten. Double standard much?

Jane walked back over to her desk, pacing. "Frost, do the four kids have anything in common? We struck out on three, but maybe four will triangulate better."

The second the words were out of her mouth, Jane winced. There was no stopping Maura now. "Triangulation works best with two fixed angles, or known reference points. The distance apart can throw off your calculations due to the Earth's curvature, though Willebrord Snell's improvements to the process in the 1600s, with multiple triangles, may be applicable. Of course in this colloquial usage, you're probably thinking that more data points would yield a hitherto unseen connection."

There was silence as that data dump was processed by the police officers. "Right, exactly what I meant," Jane said dryly. "Better get on that, Frost." The younger man hid behind his computer, smirking, and started typing away. "And check churches. The Andersons are Catholic. Maybe one or two of the other kids were too."

A short rustling of paper came from Korsak, "Nothin' in the case notes. Who the hell - Oh, Crowe." He held up the interview notes. "I'll go sit on him," offered Korsak, and he went to go find Crowe and beat him over the head with his own inefficiency.

"What's wrong with him?" asked Barry, peeking around from his monitor.

"He does seem a little touchy," agreed Maura.

Jane shook her head. "You'll have to ask him. Frost? Computer magic me." Snorting, Frost went back to work and Jane started pulling her hair. Maura clucked at her and sat in Jane's chair. "Shut up," she scowled at her best friend, who had said nothing. "That cross is bugging me. Ma put a crucifix up on my wall when I was 16, trying to get me to stop fooling around with boys."

"I don't remember seeing that in your room," Maura said, surprised.

Pointedly, Jane ignored Frost's little _look_ from over the monitor. "Yeah, I took it down and told her Tommy knocked it off my wall. She never found it."

"Where'd you put it?" asked Frost, interested.

"Pop's office. She'd never look there. Wonder where it is now." Not that she wanted, or needed, the comfort of the church she'd left, or the father who had walked out on all of them. Jane shivered a little, at lost family and a life that was no longer her own. "Anyway, point is, I hated it, I got rid of it. This kid? Crucifix up on one wall, Gaga and Twilight on the other. That doesn't mesh. He had to care about them both to keep them up. Or he was afraid."

A ding came from Frost's computer. "Nothing in common, unless the kids had Facebook or Twitter accounts their parents didn't know about. I'm pulling GPS off the phones to track them, see if their paths intersected."

Jane's eyebrows rose, "Nice idea."

"Got it from a story by Cory Doctorow," grinned Frost. Then he swore, "Damn it, Robby turned GPS off on his phone, and James had his dad's old one." Jane waggled her head at Frost, silently asking what the hell that meant. "Means I can only triangulate based on his phone calls. If he didn't make any calls while they were in the same place, it's no good."

"Can't find 'em on Facebook?"

Frost shook his head, "You know, some kids don't use their real names anymore. Hide from their folks."

"But that's in violation of the terms of service," gasped Maura.

"Yes, yes it is," Jane smiled at Maura. "What about their friends? Can't you brute force the data?" Frost winced, but allowed as he could, and went to work. That was going to keep him busy for at least the rest of the day.

More data was the name of the game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**The Cory Doctorow story Frost mentions is "I Robot" and can be found for free on[craphound.com](http://craphound.com) under the collection 'Overclocked.'** _
> 
> _**Reviews are love. Pleas will not change the outcome of the story, but they might spur a little bit more momentum with getting the edits done faster.** _


	2. Broken Vows

It wasn't difficult for Maura to sense Jane's frustration, and she tried to coerce her into coming to yoga, citing the calming nature of the physical movements when combined with the meditative aspect. Jane complained that she didn't think she could stay still long enough, and savasana wouldn't relax her or put her to sleep, it would make her twitchy. Although Maura offered to go do something like boxing with Jane, the detective begged off, saying she wanted to bounce a few more ideas off Frost and Korsak.

Thwarted in her attempt at togetherness, Maura went to yoga alone, feeling slightly petulant. Yoga was wonderful, but as with almost everything, it was better with Jane involved. Without Jane's presence, who would share the experience with her? With whom would she later discuss how much better she felt, now that her muscles were loosened and toned and her brain had released oxytocin, the so-called trust hormone which gave people feelings of bonding and affection - the hormone usually released primarily through sexual activity and other shared vigorous physical exertion, which was one of the strongest candidates for an explanation of how many romantic relationships began between students of the same yoga classes? Who would laugh when, invariably, at least one person in the class experienced flatulence upon assuming one of the pelvis-opening positions? Who would pretend to be still upset with her for insinuating to Jorge that she was gay, and then grin their special, secretive grin and give her a wink that would say, _If only we'd known then what we know now_?

Maura pulled on her exercise togs and slippers, grabbed her mat, and made her way to the yoga studio. Leaving her slippers in a spot by the door, she chose a spot close to where she and Jane always stood, right near the middle of the pack, and began stretching as others filed in and greeted one another. She gave smiles or little hellos as well, but her mind was elsewhere. Drat Jane, anyway. If she would have come to yoga, Maura wouldn't be stuck on a cycle of thoughts about Father Daniel Brophy.

 _Once again, Maura watched a victim's loved one sob uncontrollably, and though it made her sad and uncomfortable, she had no idea how to respond to cause the crying to stop. Once again, she stood mute, taking a step back as they turned to the tall, handsome man in the black suit with the white priests' collar, a man gone prematurely grey, yet still somehow youthful. Once again she heard the simplest words everyone was taught to say to the bereaved, "I am sorry for your loss," but from his delicate, almost pretty mouth, they seemed so much more sincere. Was it his soft, smooth voice that did the trick? The way he held their eyes with his, grey-blue as charred flint, yet somehow paradoxically warm, for a second or two longer than was usual in polite discourse? The way his long, snub-ended fingers rested on a shoulder or forearm as he said the otherwise_ _clichéd_ phrase, turning it somehow into an offering of warmth, safety, and surety?

_Studying him, Maura was surprised to realize that she was attracted to the man behind the collar._

_Well, there was nothing wrong about that. A man of the cloth was, after all, a man first. He had lived for several years - how many? she wondered - before taking on the role of a priest. There was nothing unhealthy about acknowledging a passing attraction to him, as long as she didn't act on it. Maura had self-restraint; she wasn't an animal. She could certainly live with not developing a relationship or consummating the sexual act with everyone for whom she had such feelings._

_A slightly formal interaction sprang up between them. They could discuss cases, the way she handled her duties to the victims' families versus the way he handled his. "We both offer different types of closure," he once described it as they drank coffee down in her morgue after a particularly trying body identification. "You give them information to piece together what happened. I try to help them live with it. Neither of us have it easy, but it's important work. I'm glad to do whatever I can to ameliorate their suffering, and I can see that you are, too."_

_Six months later, Father Brophy invited Maura to church._

_"I'm agnostic. I neither believe nor disbelieve," she informed him, a little abashed. She had never been shy about her beliefs, or rather her lack of them, but didn't want to seem as if she needed to negate Father Brophy's. "I respect your faith, but I don't share it."_

_"Actually, that place of uncertainty is a very valuable place, spiritually speaking," the priest responded, sounding neither surprised nor unwelcoming. "People who know something are notoriously inflexible. People who think something, believe something, or who openly admit to not knowing... well, those are people who can learn, can broaden their knowledge without feeling like they're losing face. Besides," he leaned in with a little wink, crinkling the very corners of his grey-blue Irish eyes, "not only do we have our adult choir, who'll be performing a pretty mean rendition of a Mozart piece called 'Regina Coeli' this week, but we have coffee cake. And coffee." The unexpectedly dry humor of the last remark caused Maura to laugh more easily than she usually did, and to accept the offer._

_That Sunday, the agnostic scientist saw her acquaintance in a new way. As the priest spoke about the concepts of generosity and giving, Maura heard the man speak about relinquishing one's emotional need for control over the gifts being given. As the priest talked of accepting gifts with graciousness, Maura heard the man talk of the struggle to give without seeing oneself as the source of the gift, without feeling the need to be seen as a benefactor. The priest lectured on giving charity with a Christ-like spirit; Maura heard the man's view that charity was not something given from a greater to a lesser, but about an injustice being rectified. The priest offered words of wisdom, restraint, dignity; the man, Maura realized, had much passion which needed to be restrained._

_After the service, when all hands had been shaken by the priest, Maura remained behind, eager to discuss the sermon, or rather, the thought process behind the writing thereof. She suggested they share the midday meal. "I know you're probably used to planned Sunday luncheons, and I can't really offer that, but I do have the makings for a lovely, if light, chicken salad at home. You must be tired, after speaking with such..." She paused, not wanting to use the word that had first come to mind. "...energy."_

_By the middle of the meal, they were calling one another friends. "However, for the sake of your personal reputation and my professional one," Father Brophy said, "perhaps we had better remain professional acquaintances while at the precinct and in other venues." Maura agreed, and so began a warm acquaintance._

_She attended Father Brophy's sermons once every three to four weeks, and they would have lunch or coffee to discuss what he'd said. He brought books to Doctor Isles's attention, remaining behind after every bereavement call at the precinct to talk with her about her thoughts on the literature. Biblical exegesis, church history, and speculations on the nature of spiritual matters held equal importance in their talks with murder cases, forensic pathology, and science. Literature, history, music and art followed. They began calling one another by first names, rather than by professional titles. Throughout was the thread of thought and emotion: why did a scientist think to ask a certain question, and thus begin delving for the answers that led to this or that advance in technology or understanding of the physical world? What had made a saint act in thus-and-such a manner, thus endangering her by bringing her to the very situation that had made her a martyr? How did they feel about the news that morning, what did they dream of doing, and what a pleasure it was to speak to someone equally passionate about their interests._

_The word kept being used. Passion of Christ. Passionate commitment to the community, to the congregation. Passionately involved in volunteerism. Passionate conveying of one's views. It seemed Maura couldn't let the word alone; like a sore, she poked at it, examined it every time she used it, replayed the conversations in her head._

_That was why she realized that Father Brophy was using it, too; and like herself, seemed to hesitate, not before saying it, but after he'd said it, as if worried about the impression he was giving._

_When the snow was a foot deep, Maura gave her gloves to a homeless woman on the way to see Daniel Brophy. Her pale purple fingers had caused him to rush to put the kettle on for their meeting in his church office, and then to quickly take her hands in his to warm them, staving off frostbite. "What happened to your gloves? Weren't they kid, with cashmere lining? You were just telling me about them last week. A gift from your father, weren't they?"_

_"I must have...," Maura paused, unable to lie, but refusing to be seen as a boaster. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, and becoming even pinker from the heat in the rectory; or perhaps simply from the unaccustomed contact. Touch, more than personal discretion, kept her silent for a little longer._

_She looked up at him. He looked down at her. "Your hands are warm," she said, and did not even have the presence of mind to chastise herself for the mundane inanity of it, the obviousness. Why had she thought his hands would feel delicate, like a scholar who did nothing but write all day? They weren't. They were strong. Intellectually, Maura had known he polished his own shoes, played basketball with the kids in the youth program, actually repaired the altar himself when a vandal had hacked away part of it with a hatchet, telling her with wry amusement, that Jesus had been a carpenter as well._

_The information had not trickled down from her brain to her skin, though, until just this moment, when warmth from his lightly callused hands engulfed her icicle-like fingers, then shot up her arms to her shoulders, spreading an uncomfortable sensation from there to her chest and throughout her body. He was a man, she remembered vividly - more vividly than she permitted herself most of the time._

_A man who was asking again about the gloves, wanting to know why she wouldn't wear them, wouldn't take care of herself on such a cold day. Asking, in between lifting her hands to blow his warm breath over them, awakening the 2,500 nerve endings per square inch on each fingertip._

_Maura temporized, so as not to be thought prideful regarding an act of caritas. "I must have left them somewhere." He was wearing a wool sweater over his shirt, and the priestly collar was not evident. Why hadn't he worn it? Seeing it reminded her of his role, his commitment, the direction in which he chose to focus his passion._

_Daniel's hands kept rubbing hers, chafing blood and warmth and life back into them; but they were moving more slowly now, and each time he blew onto her fingers or palms, he lifted them a little closer, bent his head a little further down to meet them coming up. "Daniel," Maura said, embarrassed at the way her voice didn't come through until halfway finished with the name. "Don't."_

_He stopped. "Maura."_

_They froze._

_He released her hands slowly, as though afraid they might crumble apart, and stepped away just as the kettle began to boil._

"Maura."

Brock, the yoga instructor was standing over her. Maura opened her eyes even before she had assessed her physical state: muscles relaxed, limbs loose, breathing steady, both tired and energized, balanced. There she lay in corpse pose, savasana to the initiated. Brock was asking, "Did you fall asleep?" and sounding partly amused, partly annoyed. He was a gentle soul, but didn't entirely like it when people took the lessons as an opportunity for a free nap.

"No," Maura replied truthfully as she sat up. "I was just... processing some things."

Understanding caused Brock to nod. "Some of the poses are good at bringing out things that need to be dealt with. There's not another class after this one for an hour, if you'd like to stay and meditate for a while."

But Maura stood anyway. "No, thank you. I have some work I need to do before I can head home for the evening. See you next time." Brock was a good man, she reflected. It was a shame that he'd taken that vow of celibacy. It was also a shame he hadn't thought to tell her that before they went on a double date together.

Instead of returning to the office, Maura took her work home and left a message for Jane, asking her if she was planning to come over afterwards. That there was no prompt reply from the detective didn't worry the doctor. It wasn't abnormal for Jane to get wrapped up in a case and put off non-critical conversations. No doubt Jane had heard the message and filed it away as an 'as soon as I'm done' missive.

True to form, Jane called her back a mere ten minutes later. "Hey, I'll be over in an hour, I'm taking Ma home."

"Did her car break down?"

"Worse, she loaned it to Tommy," growled Jane. Maura could almost hear the eye roll in her inflection and smiled.

It wasn't quite an hour before Jane arrived at Maura's home, sans her mother, who had probably gone directly to the guest house. Still dressed for the day, Jane paused by Maura and lightly bussed her forehead in passing. Maura's book went down and her eyes rose toward the detective, "Uh-uh. You forgot."

Backtracking a step, Jane looked down at her in confusion, one arm dangling over the back of the couch. "Forgot what?" Maura lifted her eyebrows and ran one finger across Jane's arm. "Oh," smiled Jane, and she lent down for a proper kiss.

All too soon, the detective pulled away. "Stay," Maura pouted.

"I gotta shower. I smell like soup kitchens and youth groups." Jane caressed Maura's cheek tenderly. "Besides, Ma said she was gonna eat with us, unless we were eating sushi or something gross."

As Jane went to shower and change, Maura put in a call to her favorite Japanese place for an order of sushi.

* * *

After dinner, which did not include Angela due to the fact that Maura had ordered 'bait,' Jane caught Maura up on the case. "Korsak's kid, you remember, Josh? He's doing some work at a soup kitchen said he saw Robby Auson, that second kid, a couple times." Without being asked, Jane decided to do the dishes to make up for her inattentiveness that day.

"Is that good?" Maura sat on her counter, in her slouchiest, most 'Jane-esque' clothes, and watched. Little by little over the course of their friendship and subsequent romantic relationship, she had learned what, for Jane, constituted appropriate attire for hanging out together, and had become more comfortable wearing said attire. It wasn't that she didn't like such clothes. Maura had simply not taken the time, before Jane, to understand and appreciate the more informal subculture that was Jane's home.

Once she did, she found that there _were_ rules. Understanding those new rules, particularly how to create visual cues with clothing that said she belonged, had taken some doing, but she was getting there. No one, for instance, had had to tell her that yes, borrowing Jane's tank top and a Henley was a good idea - the glowing approval in Jane's eyes the first time Maura had sauntered out of Jane's bedroom wearing _that_ was confirmation enough. At the same time, borrowing Jane's jeans was _not_ acceptable, even though the fit was flattering in a different way from the way they flattered Jane, because they were too long to look right. She was learning.

"Well it's something. Korsak showed him the other pictures, but he didn't recognize them. A lot of kids volunteer these days, it's getting big again." Jane finished loading the dishwasher and turned it on, tossing the dishtowel towards the laundry room.

"Jane," chastised Maura, getting up to retrieve the towel from the floor. Jane caught her waist and pulled her in to a loose armed hug. With a pleased hum, Maura leaned against Jane, enjoying the moment. "I ordered sushi on purpose."

Laughing at the confession, Jane turned Maura around and kissed her. "I deduced that, sweetie." Maura's hands moved to Jane's shoulders, pulling her close.

Finally they parted, "Your mother might see us."

Part of Jane didn't care at all, and she pressed her nose against Maura's head, inhaling the lovely scent that was somewhat shampoo, but also just the clean, warm scent of womanliness. _Maura_. "Yeah," she agreed regretfully. "I'm still not ready."

"Take your time." Maura punctuated this with a squeeze. "All the time you need." Jane couldn't think of what to say, and Maura filled the conversation void, kissing her nose and asking, "How did you think of asking Josh?" before actually picking up the towel and going into the laundry room.

Jane propped herself up in the doorway. "It was Korsak's idea. He figured since Chris was Catholic, and Josh was working at a Catholic soup kitchen near the school... Total luck that he got a hit on the other kid. Did you get a chance to go over the autopsies?"

As meticulous with her laundry as she was with everything else in her life, Maura carefully measured out detergent. "Yes, they were all suicides." Pausing, she looked at the wall behind the dishwasher. "There's no foolproof way to commit suicide. Statistics show that only one out of every eleven attempts is successful, though someone dies every 14.6 seconds. That means roughly 0.0118% of the population commits suicide each year."

"Roughly?" asked Jane, her voice tight. The numbers hit her like a punch to the gut. Sarcasm was her only shield.

"Based on 2008 values released by the CDC. That's not counting the number of people treated for self-inflicted injuries. 53.7% of all suicides are via firearms. The numbers went down during the United States' period of economic growth, but the recession has caused a resurgence, as it were. And young white males, between fourteen and twenty-three, have the second highest rate of suicide, following adult white males. The lowest is adult African American women." Maura stopped herself and looked at Jane, concerned. "I've never tried to kill myself."

Jane looked away, her long-healed self-inflicted gunshot wound twinging only in her mind. "I told you, I wasn't trying to kill myself."

"I believe you," Maura replied, quietly. "There's no correlation between intelligence and suicide," she added, her voice a whisper.

Rubbing her head, Jane sighed. "I knew a cop who ate his gun once, but... Most people I know just do really stupid things instead." Which, if Maura pressed her, Jane would admit that shooting herself had been. But that had never crossed Jane's mind, and Maura, out of everyone, seemed to understand that. At the very least, she didn't actively challenge Jane on the topic.

She looked at Maura, silently waiting for a comment, but Maura just nodded and turned on the whisper quiet washing machine. "Statistics would suggest everyone knows at least one person who has attempted suicide. I wanted you to know it wasn't me."

Why did Maura make everything better, just by being herself? "Oh, I know," sighed Jane. "Anyway, after we got that lead, we started hitting up every youth hostel and soup kitchen we could find in the area. Robby was a regular volunteer at a couple of those, so tomorrow Frost and I are going to talk to his parents."

"Did you find out if he was Catholic?"

"No, Crowe was useless. Never asked. We figure it'd be better if we ask the parents while we're there, instead of calling them and _then_ showing up with more questions." Jane wound a lock of hair around a finger. "I'm thinking yes, though. The places Robby went were all Catholic. Course the family didn't tithe, or if they did, it was with cash. It may be on their tax records, which we're still waiting on."

Jane remembered bringing in a part of her allowance and being pissed off that she had to give it back to the church in her youth. That was the subject of many a fight with her mother, and part of why Jane had taken down her crucifix.

Thoughtfully, Maura walked back into the kitchen, "Is that normal? Tithing cash?"

"It can be," Jane allowed. "Nonna did. Dad preferred a check, or to volunteer and fix the plumbing. Ma wanted me to go on a youth mission."

"Oh that sounds nice! You could have gone to Africa and experienced another country while helping, like Ian I did." They both stopped, as thoughts of Ian ran through the room. "Perhaps that was a bad example," Maura added, worried.

Jane snorted, "You think?" She reached over to shove Maura in the shoulder and smiled.

With a shy smile, Maura shoved Jane back. "Why didn't you go?"

"Ma thought I'd get killed in New Guinea. Carla Talucci had this whole drama about how I'd be kidnapped and killed for my lily white skin." Jane rolled her eyes. "So I went to baseball camp instead. I had more fun." Yawning, Jane looked at her watch. It was already eleven.

Maura checked on Bass' water, "Do you need to go take care of Joe?" Joe Friday, Jane's tiny, scruffy mutt, had a plethora of Rizzolis and assorted others willing to look in on her, but preferred her own particular human, Jane, above the others.

"I really should spend a night at home with her," Jane smiled. "You wanna come over?"

"Animals do like routine," agreed Maura, looking around her house. "I'll come over if you promise not to stay up all night going over the case." As soon as Jane started looking sheepish, Maura pursed her lips, "I'm going to stay here. Call me when you get in."

After a fonder goodnight kiss, Jane drove home, drumming her fingers on the wheel of her car. She very much wanted to stay at Maura's, but her mind was still whirling. Getting a case half-way in was hard to deal with on the best day, and dealing with suicides... _I'm going to have to talk to Korsak,_ she sighed, banging her thumbs on the steering wheel instead of her head. It wasn't her story to tell, though, and he was going to have to man up on this one to Frost. She didn't mind handling Maura.

It was bad enough carrying the saga of Josh, which was now getting a little happier at least. But to toss in this was crazy. She shook her head and pulled into her parking spot. "I should have shot Melody when I had the chance," she complained, and grabbed her mail on the way up.

Joe was happy to see her, and they went out for a short walk before bed. After lying on her bed for an hour, Jane gave up and brought the laptop in to go over her notes. Lieutenant Cavanaugh had a lot of faith in the trio of Korsak/Rizzoli/Frost, tossing them a case like this. While it was 'only' four deaths, that many suicides that close together smelled fishier than Denmark. But so far, no evidence of a suicide pact had come up, leaving the options as coincidence and coercion. "What sick bastard would tell kids to kill themselves?" she wondered, making a note of that. Problem was, after all her years on the force, Jane knew _exactly_ what sort of sicko would do that. "No evidence of anyone watching or recording the death," she remarked and added that data in as well.

"What would Maura say?" asked Jane, lying back on the bed. "Probably how mass suicides are different from the smaller pacts, which are -" Jane grabbed her pillow and covered her face with it, forcing herself to shut up. After a moment of this, she sat back up and looked at her laptop. A friend of hers in family justice had told her about a pregnancy pact attempted by a couple kids. One of the girls, being a little more practical than the others, had told her parents that she was being pressured, not by her boyfriend, but her best friends to have sex without a condom.

Thankfully, they'd been able to talk most of the girls out of it before it was too late. All it took was one kid speaking up. Jane shot an email to Frost, asking him to look up if there were any suicide _attempts_ by white, male, teenagers. After a pause, she added Catholic to that list, trusting her gut more than anything else. _Maura would make a face at me_ , she thought, closing the laptop and putting it on the floor.

At least she would try to get some sleep before talking to the Auson family tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Reviews are like sushi. They chase Angela away so there can be Rizzles.** _


	3. Sexual Deviants

Unsurprisingly, Jake Graff's parents and friends had been too upset to talk coherently with them. When your son threw himself into the path of an oncoming MTA train, in front of his friends on their way to summer school, finding your voice about how he'd been feeling the days before was impossible for many. Most of the children had declined to talk at all, or their parents had on their behalf, and the Graff family had simply sobbed for half an hour.

The only new information had been from one boy, who in the middle of explaining how he'd been playing a racing game on his iPhone, mentioned that Jake Graff knew how to turn off the GPS and parental controls on every phone. "So we could totally download stuff." Like the illegal racing game he had on his own phone. The detectives had gently pointed out they were homicide, and promised to leave the information about the game out of their report.

Jane had gone with Korsak to the Auson family, leaving Frost to work with Maura (may as well use her hospital connections) to check out suicide attempts. Since the kids were minors, they'd spent half the morning filling in paperwork for a warrant, and finding an ADA who had a teenage son to help them file it. "Always stack your deck," Korsak had explained to Frost, and let him run with it for the practice.

"We're just following up. I don't know if you heard, but three other boys also killed themselves this month," Jane explained quietly.

Mrs. Auson nodded, austerely, "Yes, we went to the vigil for the Graff family."

Both detectives shared a look. The first death was Jake Graff. "Did you know the family?" asked Korsak, keeping his voice even and calm.

Surprisingly, Mrs. Auson nodded, "I should say so. The Graffs were married in the same church we were, the same week. We saw them quite a bit that summer. Before Robby was-" Her composure cracked and Mrs. Auson sucked in a deep breath. "Before Robby was born, we all went to the same church."

Her husband said nothing, simply staring at his hands. Jane picked up the box of Kleenex from the coffee table and held it out to Mrs. Auson. "I'm sorry to be bringing all this back up again," she apologized. "Especially when it's so raw."

The mother blotted her eyes, her stiff upper lip reminding Jane oddly of a cross between her mother and Maura's. "The first detective, he didn't say anything about the Graffs. Are the- Are our sons' deaths related?"

"We don't know," admitted Korsak. "We're trying to find out if there are connections between them, though. Do you know if the boys knew each other?"

The husband shook his head, still silent, but now he was staring at Jane's hands. She tried to ignore him as the wife answered, "No... I don't... Robby was older, and we'd moved here before he was born. I just saw the name in the paper."

This brought on another round of sobbing, and Jane waited it out before asking, "What church do you go to now?"

The answer floored Jane, "Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows." There were hundreds of Catholic churches in the great Boston area, and more than three near the current address. Of course, this house on the line between two parishes, had to belong to St. Gabe's.

Korsak didn't seem to notice her shock, or the stiffening of her body, but Mr. Auson did. He finally looked up, meeting Jane's eyes, and very slightly, he nodded. Barely a nod. Dutifully, Korsak made a better list of Robby's after-school activities, including a full list of the volunteer work. Jane noted that _his_ parents had planned to let _him_ go on a Youth Mission the next summer.

When they got up to leave, it was Mr. Auson who followed them to the door. "My wife," he said softly, hoarsely, and then stopped. "You know the congregation?" he asked, directly to Jane, who nodded back. "Then you know..." Again, Jane nodded. The husband nodded as well and closed the door.

"What the hell was that about?" Korsak demanded as they got in the car.

"That's the church my family used to go to."

Explaining her old church to Korsak would be hard. Not impossible, just not something Jane really wanted to do. Between the two of them, they had enough secrets from and for each other. Cavanaugh too, though Jane was pretty sure he didn't know as much as she did. She'd deflected her partner, telling him the new priest had started after she'd moved out, which was true. Clearly all that time spent with Maura was paying off.

Korsak, himself a master at avoiding subjects that hit too close to home, let it go. "I'm gonna try that soccer club the Smith boy was in. It's in the area, so we can hit them up if they're free." With the car windows open to the end-of-summer warmth, Korsak sat on the bumper and dialed the team's administration.

In lieu of disclosing her connection to the case, Jane pondered the kids themselves. She didn't know enough, and some of her leads wouldn't bear fruit until phone calls were returned. Pinching the bridge of her nose and flexing her forehead to work out the scowl of concentration she'd been wearing, the lanky woman lent back in the driver's seat of her car, closed her eyes, blocked out Korsak's phone conversation with yet _another_ parent who was saying 'no', and mused.

Something was setting these boys off. Later Jane would try to figure out what, or who. Right now, maybe she should try getting into their skin a little bit. Not to feel why they would commit suicide, but to consider what led up to actually taking the action.

Did they leave notes, diaries, manifestos somewhere? She'd have to check for that, ask the parents. If she were going to commit suicide, she'd probably at least want people to know why. Teenagers were notoriously self-absorbed, but surely at least one of them would either be considerate enough to give his family some answers, or be angry enough to want someone to feel guilty for having gotten him to this point. Jane thought that in their place, she would have been up front about her reasons. Whether to absolve loved ones or blame them, she'd never just go silently. _Someone_ would know why.

Did they seek help first? Maybe, whatever their problems were, they'd checked out books on the subjects at a public or school library. Had they talked to a librarian?

They all went to different schools, and a heck of a lot went to summer school, but some schools were known to share personnel. Her own had had a music teacher that rotated among three different schools at different times of day. Maybe a guidance counselor had attended to all three of them. Though, Jane mused, guidance counselors seldom gave actual guidance about anything other than applying for colleges. It was probably a dead end, that, but she'd still hunt it up to be sure, and any other teachers that rotated between the four victims' schools.

Maybe they didn't have anything in common that was traceable on paper. But if one had track and field with another, who had a job with another, or a favorite place to hike, or...

Jane sighed. Speculation wasn't getting her very far. Maura would love to know that, and would do her classy little "told you so." Still, in the absence of facts, one had to speculate somehow, if only to have a place to start looking.

Did the boys have _anything else_ in common? A coach, priest, trusted friend...

Jane's eyes opened. A friend. That was it. "Korsak," she barked, interrupting Vince's telephone conversation with another potential lead that would probably be a bust. Smith had dropped soccer when it conflicted with band practice anyway. He finished his call, trying to ignore Jane fuming right beside him, tapping her foot, playing with the scar tissue on her hands, and being a general pain in the ass. The second he hung up the phone, she said, "Get in. We're going to go talk with their parents and their teachers. I want to know who these boys' friends were."

* * *

With Vince and Jane off talking to the parents, Barry had been 'abandoned' to get a warrant and collect hospital reports of Catholic teenage boys who had attempted suicide. Perhaps predictably, he'd begged Maura to help him. "I can pull out ones who don't fit our profiles, based on psych reports. Like the ones who are being abused. But _you_ could spot the real tricky stuff." He'd smiled too fetchingly at Maura and somehow she'd ended up with a stack of reports.

"At least Barry already culled them," sighed Maura, and brought the stack to review in her office. Intuition work like this was generally better done by Jane, but Barry had a point. Maura's vast medical knowledge and experience would expedite this process. It was easy to let the majority of her conscious mind look for the oddities in the reports, things that caught her eye and felt similar to what she'd seen in the autopsies. Meanwhile, she allowed a substantial portion of her subconscious and part of her conscious mind, what Jane would call collectively her back brain, to review other matters. Matters she had thought long settled.

_How in the world had this happened?_

_Logically, Maura could remember the sequence of events that had led her to this moment, the occasions in which there had been recognizable 'almosts' had built up until one day instead of another almost, there was a finally. And another, and another._

_She remembered when Father Brophy, attractive but off-limits priest, had become Daniel, her equally off-limits friend. There were clear memories she could isolate: smiles over coffee, discussions over tea, lunches discussing his sermons, the realization that people in his congregation knew her by sight and name because she had been coming almost every other week to either a Sunday service or a weekday mass._

_Vividly she could recall the moment they had stopped pretending it was nothing. It was he who had instigated the kiss. Jumping without apparent fear from holding her hands in the living room of her old townhouse to inexpertly pressing his lips against hers. Later, she'd verified her initial assessment that she was the only person he'd attempted to kiss romantically._

_"Daniel, we shouldn't do this."_

_She hadn't wanted to say the words, and while the details of his faith, the depth of his love for his religion, were his own, she knew if he stayed they would end up doing something they would both regret. Kissing him had felt so nice, so fulfilling. Expertise, or lack thereof, was no issue at all: the passion in their words translated perfectly to the natural, human passions of the body._

_"You're right," he agreed, and Maura's heart felt torn. Daniel stood up, but made no move to leave. "I don't want to go."_

_It was his eyes that broke her willpower. Maura Isles, Maura-the-bore-a, who couldn't read people, who didn't understand their jokes or sarcasm, could read Daniel Brophy's eyes. The eyes of a man who loved her, and wanted her, as a man wanted a woman._

_He stood still, turning his head to look away from Maura, as if meeting her eyes would undo him completely. "I made a vow. I promised to the Church, but more importantly to God, that I would do this, that I would be his servant." The words were hollow excuses, flimsy walls erected between them, bearing no conviction within._

_"I don't know a lot about God," Maura replied honestly. She was very good at knowing what various religions taught, but she had no direct spiritual experience at all on which to base an idea of God, his theoretical personality or wishes, any feelings he might have towards her, or any she might have about him. "I don't believe in God. I don't disbelieve either, but I'm... Well, if it weren't for you, I would not really think the existence of a deity was of relevance to me at all. But," she added, standing and taking one slow, measured, and uncertain step forward, "I do know that you believe in him. And I know that the deity in which you believe is concerned with two things."_

_One hand nudged itself forward until she was touching his, a little play of fingertips against the edge of his hand. "One of those things is the notion of right and wrong." As his hand turned, not knowing but understanding how to respond, she laced their fingers together. "And the other is forgiving those who can't quite live up to perfection."_

_Maura remembered well the sequence of events, and even the thought processes, that had brought her here, to this place in her life, to the room where she had awakened and tiptoed through morning ablutions so as not to awaken the man half-clothed in the bed sheets she had also worn that night, then left her hotel key on the nightstand and departed for work. She could not, however, quite reconstruct for herself the moment when it had become a habit._

_And for the life of her, she could not recollect the moment at which she had let herself decide that it was okay to have a relationship with what, for all intents and purposes, was a married man. With, at least according to his beliefs, a Spouse who had known about her, and them, all along._

When her phone erupted with Jane's familiar ringtone, papers flew across her desk and onto the floor, scattered by startled hands which abandoned them long enough to dive for the cellphone in her bag. "Isles. I mean, sorry, hi, Jane. The phone startled me out of concentration." She squatted near to the floor to start picking up papers and shuffling them back into neatness, then sat back up on her chair to return the pages to their proper order.

Across the line, Jane snorted a laugh. "It sounds like your day's been as productive as mine." She sounded aggrieved and drained. "Korsak's getting me lunch on account of my genius, and we're gonna follow up at the schools." She caught Maura up, succinctly, on the interviews with parents and friends. "I may have to apologize to Crowe. His notes were crap, but there's not a lot to go on. Did you find anything useful in the autopsy reports?"

"Nothing," Maura replied, disappointed to have to say it, but relieved that Jane had not asked her anything else. "All four deaths are most definitely suicides. The body processing was very thorough, and I'm satisfied that nothing was missed. There were no commonalities in trace elements, toxins, fibers, or any other detritus. I'm not seeing anything that's common to all four of the... Oh."

Silence.

" _Oh_ ," again.

Jane could hear the sound of pages being turned, folders being opened, slapped down, more pages turning, more rapidly. "Now, that's interesting," Maura said softly.

Coughing delicately, Jane spoke up. "Sweetie, your out loud voice would be nice right about now. And in normal people English, if possible."

"There are starches between three of the boys' teeth that hadn't yet been broken down by the amylase in the saliva which... Oh. Sorry," Maura broke off at Jane's cough. "In the teeth of three of the suicides, and in all four of their stomach contents, _and_ in the stomach contents of the suicide attempts whose stomachs were pumped or who regurgitated naturally in the hospital and actually had the contents tested, I've found either remnants of cooked wheat flour, or the chemical components I'd expect to find from the breakdown of wheat flour. In several of the cases, including all of the successful suicides, there are actual food particles that were still undigested."

Her voice held a certain tension, an excitement, though not the sort that Jane liked to hear. There was no joy in this excitement, no air of pleasant expectation. She sounded... it was hard for Jane to put a word to it.

"There are also traces of fructose, light traces of tannins, and-"

"Cut to the chase, Maur."

"Grape juice, Jane," replied the pathologist, and at Maura's next statement, Jane identified the sound in her lover's voice: she sounded predatory. "The boys had all ingested grape juice and wheat crackers shortly before taking, or trying to take, their own lives. I believe it would be reasonable to infer that they'd been given Communion."

* * *

Three of the boys had been in summer school, which made finding their friends a little easier. They were all smart kids, and even the ones who didn't know them well had expressed appreciation for their help. It was almost like a Stepford mass suicide. The problem was, with kids that good, none of the people who saw them daily had anything useful.

Megan Williams was the only school friend who had any information. She had been Chris Anderson's classmate since second grade, and one of his best friends. Even though his death was so recent, she'd come to summer school because he would have wanted her to. "There was something going on," Megan admitted to Jane, collected but on the verge of tears. "He said he was going to talk to someone about something, an adult." Gesturing for the girl to sit down, Jane took the chair beside her and wondered why schools had such uncomfortable chairs. She'd never been able to concentrate when her butt hurt. "It doesn't make any sense. Chris was funny and cool and everyone loved him!"

When the girl started crying, Jane took her hands and said, comfortingly, "It's okay. You're doing a great job. Were you close?"

"He was my best friend," sobbed Megan, and she curled up on herself, sobbing into her arms. Jane put an arm around the shaking girl and tried to soothe her nerves, while telepathically telling Korsak to go away. Girls never wanted to confess in front of guys. Especially teddy bear guys like Korsak who reminded them of their daddies or favorite uncles.

Her partner caught the clue and went to the end of the hall, pretending to take a call. "I know what you're feeling. I'd be a mess if this happened to my best friend. I just want to find out if Chris was being bullied, or had any reason to kill himself."

Megan sobbed a few more times, but then managed to collect herself. "Everyone liked Chris," she replied. "I just don't understand."

Clearly this was getting nowhere, "What about that adult he was going to talk to. What was that about? Was someone pushing him around?"

Megan shook her head, "No. I think he was going to talk about God." Ding. That was three times now. Coincidence no more. They had a Church problem. But just when Jane thought she had a hold on it, Megan dropped the other shoe. "I told him he should talk to my priest," she sniffled. "Episcopals, we don't care if you're gay."

"I'm sorry, what?" asked Jane, startled. The posters. _Oh._ Now a series of small clues made perfect sense.

"We were in the GSA together. I made him come so he could see it was okay to be gay. That he didn't have to-" Megan started sobbing again. "He thought that because he was a deviant, he'd have to join the priesthood."

The phrase was hauntingly familiar to Jane. Sexual deviants should join the priesthood. She couldn't remember where she'd heard that before. "But he didn't want to, did he?" she asked Megan, quietly, and was rewarded with a head shake. No, Chris didn't want to join the priesthood. "Why not?"

"He didn't have a calling."

Of course not. This was the group Chris had been in, the one he'd never told his parents about. And of course not. A good Catholic boy isn't gay. He went to church, he got married to a good Catholic girl, he had Catholic babies. Jane's heart ached. Oh that poor kid. No. Those poor _kids_. Why else would four boys, four good Catholic, charitable boys, kill themselves without warning or notice?

The kids had to have a connection, though, a place they all met or had in common besides _just_ the church. Something, or someone, who would drive them to think suicide, a sin, was preferable to the sin of homosexuality.

What sort of jerkface would tell a kid that?

The same guy who'd say that the only place on Earth for perverts was the priesthood.

Jane never wanted so much to be wrong in her life that _he_ was still there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Reviews introduce you to jerkfaces. Sorry about that.** _


	4. Hell to Go

Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. Terrible name for a church, Jane had thought while growing up. A church should be a happy place, where you could feel loved and welcomed. Her old priest, the one she'd known growing up, once joked "Our Lady of Drinking our Sorrows Away."

Jane missed him. May he rest in peace.

It had been years, longer than she'd been friends with Maura, since Jane had stepped foot inside that particular church. She'd been to others for her cousins and friends, but luckily she'd never had to go back to Our Lady of Sorrows. Her mother, on the other hand, probably still attended, and of all the people she knew, Angela would be the easiest to ask about the current goings on.

Actually, Father Brophy would have been good too. Jane would have to call him later.

"Hey, Ma, what church are you going to these days?" she asked, bounding into the nearly empty cafe.

"Still Saint Gabe's," Angela shorthanded the name as she scraped the latest sausage remnants off the grill. "Same as it ever was. Why?"

"One of the kids went there," explained Jane, not getting into any more details about which kids with her mother. After all, the parents hadn't recognized the name 'Rizzoli' when Jane had introduced herself, they would have mentioned the poor Rizzoli-divorcee had they known. "Do you know what groups the kids are into there? We had the softball team when I was a kid," she added, hoping to encourage her mother's memory.

Angela leaned down to look at the grill from another angle, stood up to give it a few more good scrapes, then grabbed the pitcher of water to pour and deglaze the surface. "Oh, sure. There's the church softball and baseball and tee-ball teams, basketball, football. They had to combine with Blessed Martyrs for hockey." Her mind was oddly focused on her work this morning; it must be because Stanley, her nitpicky boss, was out with a head cold.

Newly on her own, Angela was angling for a raise, and meeting his exacting standards was her current method. If that didn't work, she'd remind him she was now a single mother of three. He'd been raised by one, and there might be some sympathy there. Of course, she'd leave out the part of how her children had moved out, and play up the destitute divorcee.

Jane nodded, and grabbed a cup to get some coffee, neglecting to pay right away just to see if her mother was paying attention. She'd pay anyway, but family was family. "Hey, Frankie," she said to her younger brother, who was ignoring them and reading a police procedure book. "What about the, uh, the do-gooder stuff? The youth missions and all that? They still running those?"

"Yeah," Frankie chimed in immediately. "They've got the volunteers that go visit the nursing homes and hospitals. Some of the groups do the social chitchatting and spending time with people, and some of them help them get clean or take them shopping for groceries or to the dentist. They've got some that go put new flowers on graves and pick up the old dead ones. There's the one that goes out Saturday mornings and cleans up sports stadiums," he went on, getting the plural - stadia - incorrect, "because they get paid, and then they give the money to the homeless shelters and the church soup kitchen."

Once Angela knew that it wasn't just sports teams her Janie wanted, she turned away from the breakfast grill - which was now the lunch grill, just waiting for a new spate of customers to show up - and draped her hand-drying towel over one shoulder. "Don't forget the choirs. Adult, youth, and children. It broke my heart when you quit the kids' choir, Janie. You had such a pretty voice. Oh, don't argue, yes, you did. Maybe it was better for singing in some old folks' blues band, but it was nice. You could carry a tune, unlike that rotten little blonde kid, what was her name? Clara Armstrong? She only got to play Mary that year because she looked so pretty holding the light bulb they got to play Baby Jesus in the pageant. It gave her a nice glow."

"Ma," Frankie broke in, shaking his head. Jane had saved his keister on more than one occasion, sidetracking their mother's train of thought, so he owed her one.

"Right," Angela remembered, and steered back on course. "Let me think. The outreach group is still pretty strong, right? Empty nesters, the book drive folks, the-"

"Kids, Ma," Jane redirected. "Youth groups."

"Oh, right. Uh... Well, there's the acolytes, you know, the girls that come in and light the candles at the start of the service, and the altar boys, and the collection plate teenagers, and the ushers."

Sipping the coffee, and immediately adding more sugar, Jane frowned. "Not altar boys," she muttered. One of the boys had been one, but maybe he'd aged out. "Wait, Ma, how old can altar boys be?"

Angela cocked her head to one side. "I don't know for sure the cutoff age, if there is one, but you gotta figure a guy much older than eighteen or nineteen has better things to do, right? If he's an altar boy much past that, you sort of hope it's because he's mentally slow, and not because he's one of those left-sided dancers trying to make time with the younger ones."

Her two offspring stared, open-mouthed, unable to even summon a _really?_

"What? You know it happens and so do I. Anyway," their mother concluded, "I know you can be as young as, what, twelve or so? But I never saw one older than about nineteen or twenty. I know you don't have to stop when you hit eighteen, like most of the youth groups, but a guy would have to be some kind of weirdo deviant to go into that at twenty-one or twenty-five or something."

The words punched Jane in the gut nearly as hard as the bullet. She glanced at Frankie, who was quickly hiding behind his book, and realized she was alone on this one. Damn it. "Ma, come on. Altar boys are just ... guys," she began weakly. Where was Maura and that wonderful Google-mouth when you needed her? Then again, it was probably better Maura _wasn't_ here. "You know- Never mind. Who's the priest doing youth, uh, support? Whatchacallit? Counseling?"

From his table, Frankie gave his big sister a startled look. Apparently he found her line of questioning to be weird. "It's still Father Metzov," he replied, before their mother could. "You remember him, right?" When Jane gave him an icy glare, Frankie wished he'd've kept his damn mouth shut.

"Yes." The word came with miraculously little audible venom, but with a precision of diction that would have impressed her best friend ( _girlfriend_ , whispered her brain). "Okay. Looks like I get to go talk to Father Jerkface."

Angela slapped down her hand-drying towel. "Janie, just because he's not a warm person, you should still treat him with respect. He's a priest."

Crap, not this again. "Ma, I don't _have_ to like everyone, that's what Father Petey said." Jane shoved her jaw forward with a huff. "I don't like Metzov. He creeps me out."

Frankie looked surprised. "Metzov? Really? I mean, he's kinda stuck up, Janie, but he's not _that_ kind of guy. Not like that one bishop with the 70's porn 'stach." Her brother's attempt at levity did make Jane smile. Just a bit. Of course he didn't mind Metzov so much, they were both manly kind of men.

"You're just being unreasonable, Jane. Like when you wanted to wear your baseball uniform to take communion," admonished Angela. "Father Metzov's a perfectly nice man. And he's great with the boys."

"Since when?" asked both Jane and Frankie as one.

Angela was quieter than usual, but it didn't last long. "All right, Father Metzov isn't exactly a warm person. But he's a priest, which means he has a Calling. His heart's gotta be in the right place."

Frankie, surprisingly, growled first and stood. "Yeah, Ma. Look, I gotta be back to work soon." He did not, after all, wind up asking for lunch or even a drink to go.

Unbending a little, Jane patted Frankie's shoulder. "Go talk to Frost if you're off, he was saying he needed some extra manpower looking up stuff- What the hell is that!" By accident, Jane's eyes had fallen on the bulletin board in the room. Normally filled with such mundane items as 'Adopt a kitten!' or 'For Sale: Slightly Used Barcalounger,' the garish hued paper jumped out.

 _Candlelight Vigil - Pray for a Cure._ That, in and of itself, sounded fine. It was the next line that horrified Jane. _Do you know someone who has fallen to the sin of homosexuality? The brothers and sisters of St. Gabriel will be holding a prayer group to provide hope and solace for those families afflicted. Together, we will ask God to speedily help our suffering friends and family from the den of licentiousness and iniquity._

If Angela's previous comments had hurt before, her next one ripped out Jane's heart. "Speaking of the young," she said stiffly, "We're praying for their souls. Do you know how much kids 'experiment' these days?"

Jane's blood ran cold, the room wavered, and for a second, she felt like she was going to pass out. "Ma! You can't pray away gay!"

"Prayer accomplishes miracles!" Angela protested with the fervor of one who wants nothing more than to see the hand of benevolence behind the workings of the world. "If God can do anything, surely he can ease up on those poor kids and help them resist that kind of thing. They're not bad people, Janie! They're just caught up in something that sounds fun, and they have no idea the harm they're doing to themselves. To their souls. Don't you want them to be helped?"

That was how it was done, Jane saw. No one set out to hate fellow human beings. Deluded, good people had to be convinced that the desire to change others was based in love. It hurt to see her mother being one of those deluded good. "Yeah, I do, Ma. I want them to be helped. I just don't think asking God to take away the way he made them is helping. Maybe it's... You know how there are people who blind, or left-handed, or born in one country or another, or with lots of money or very little? Everything we're given, every card we're dealt, is some kind of thing from God, right?" Her own hands were tightening into fists at her side, and Jane forced herself to relax.

Angela looked nervous and wary, but nodded.

"Well, maybe those are gifts." Jane was tap-dancing awfully quickly, she thought to herself, as she tried to come up with some other way for her mother to see the concept. Surely she wouldn't really, deep down, think it was _evil._ Right? "Maybe it's like... you're given a perspective and you have to use some of it to get strong with, and some of it to teach you stuff, and some of it to help you to help somebody else. Maybe being born gay is just God's way of giving those kids something extra. Some different way to look at the world. They shouldn't have to be punished for that, or made to feel like they're wrong." Though the words were confrontational, her tone was entirely different: pleading, begging for her mother to just understand, and change her mind. To get it.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jane saw Frankie's puzzled expression. He was putting words and facts together in his own way.

Angela frowned. Something was wrong there, the expression said, even if she couldn't voice exactly what, or why. "But they can't be born that way. If they were, then it wouldn't be a sin, would it? And then the Bible wouldn't _say_ it was a sin."

Jane rolled her eyes, her entire head. "Well, they sure aren't choosing it, either," she countered. "Come on, Ma. Who's going to choose something that'll just make their lives harder? These are kids. Teenagers. It's bad enough being a teenager, without being different on top of it. Come on, don't you think a teenager would do just about anything to fit in, instead of getting bullied, teased, and having people just assume you're either a pervert or a loser who can't get a girlfriend, or boyfriend, whatever they're opposite to? Who exactly are these," one impatient hand flicked the edge of a flyer that wasn't taped down yet, "supposed to be helping? You think gay people haven't already tried to be what everybody else wants them to be? Can't you just leave it up to God to decide if he wants them to be any other way?"

Narrowing her eyes, Angela looked suspiciously at her daughter. "You sound like you're siding with these gays. Like you think it's okay for them to be that way."

"Yeah? Well, I do, Ma," sighed Jane, having run out of steam in her rhetoric. "And even if I didn't, this has no place here." She grabbed the paper and yanked it off the board, sending a pushpin flying across the room.

"Why not? Everyone else puts up ads here?" demanded Angela, standing up straight. Oh God, here it came. "I got just as much right as the rest of you, putting up my signs."

She knew she was snapping now, but Jane couldn't hold that back. "Not this... this _garbage_ , Ma! Not religious stuff, or stuff that hurts people! I thought God was about forgiving _us_. The people who can't live up to perfection. Like divorcées." The word jumped out like a punch, and Jane refused to hold it back. "Oh yeah, remember that? Divorce is a sin too! This is telling them they're not wanted _because_ they're not perfect, and I don't get how you can think this is okay! It's wrong! It's... it's crap, Ma!"

That fueled Angela's ire. "Oh and you think you know God? You haven't been to church outside a baptism or a wedding ever since -" She stopped cold there, looking equal parts angry and pained at Jane. Since Hoyt. Jane silently willed her mother to say that, to bring the ugly truths out into the air for everyone, especially her brother, frozen in horror in the doorway, to see. "Maybe if you went to church more, you'd understand," Angela finished, huffing.

"I will _never_ go to a church that teaches hate," Jane replied, her voice dripping with venom and rancor. "And I can't believe my own _mother_ would side with that," she shook the paper at her mother. "You get this crap down before the end of the day. I'm giving you a chance to remove these on your own before I send in HR to deal with someone pushing religion in a government work place. I just hope nobody notices that it's my own mother who would be the subject of the formal complaint. I'm ashamed to have to even consider it."

"Well, I'm ashamed to think you'd approve of _sin_."

"I'm ashamed to be your daughter." The words were out before she could stop them, and they fell there, _splat,_ dead and stinking. In the doorway, Frankie's jaw dropped open: he was too shocked to even wince. But once it had happened, Jane couldn't back away from it, and truth be told, she'd gotten her blood pumping so hard that she could no longer see a reason why she should. "And as of this moment, and until you get your head out of your ass, I am _not_ your daughter. You think those nice homosexuals are going to hell, Ma? _You_ go to hell."

Angela's head snapped back, as if Jane had physically punched her. "How can you say that, Janie?" she asked, clearly lost at sea in the horrible truth of what Jane had just said. "To your _mother_?"

It was too late to take anything back, and Jane didn't want to. Every inch of her wanted to hit her mother so hard with words that she never had to speak to her mother again ... Her mother. Jane set her jaw and held onto that truth, that this was her mother. "I'll say that to anyone who falls for crap like this. _Angela_." She bit out her mother's name and crumpled the paper, throwing it down. "And you," Jane turned to her brother and poked him in the badge. "You remember who you wear this for."

They could both go to hell. Her mother for thinking that, her brother for silent assent. Blood boiling, Jane went right to the elevator bank, to talk to the only person who might convince her that matricide was a bad idea.

* * *

The knock on Maura's office door caused her to hurry through fastening her dress back up, now that she had doffed her autopsy scrubs and could look more suitable for the work environment. "Coming," she called, hopping as she put on each shoe on her way to open the door. "I'm sorry, Jane, I didn't mean to ignore your text, but I..."

The person at the other side of the door was not Jane.

Even so, Maura's face lit up. "Fancy seeing you here!"

Tall and handsome, the all-black clerical clothing set off Father Daniel Brophy's looks. He could be a poster boy for the priesthood. "I hope you don't find this an imposition, Dr. Isles," he smiled at her with a smothered longing expression which caused her own expression to falter, tempered by her immediate comprehension of that which he carried for both of them. "You looked a little distressed at the Anderson house. I wanted - I wanted to make sure you were all right."

Though their affair was long since concluded, Daniel had occasionally checked in on Maura. After she'd been attacked by Hoyt, he'd left a message, offering to be an ear if she needed to talk. Maura had never called him back, and she felt irrational guilt as she actually faced her former... No, her mind refused to acknowledge it directly. It was over. It had to be over. "It's never an imposition," she replied, adding with studied nonchalance at the title which felt so inappropriate, "Father. Please come inside."

She was careful to open the blinds that she'd shut for changing her clothes, even before closing the door behind him. It was a good thing, she reflected, that he'd worn his trousers to the precinct instead of his clerical waistcoat; it would have been too difficult. She had once loved helping him dress, and though she had never fetishized his profession or the vestments required, he had cut such a dashing figure in the long, dress-like coat... _Stop it, Maura! You may not be lustful for your ex. Who is a priest. A committed, serious, dedicated... rededicated... priest. Besides, you have a girlfriend who loves you. Who works upstairs and has a gun._

Daniel- Father Brophy glanced at the door with little more than a raised eyebrow. Clearly he felt that since this was her domain, she was permitted to set the ground rules. "Thank you." He hesitated and then sat on her couch. "You've redecorated." His voice sounded pleased, admiringly so. "You always have shown impeccable taste, Doctor."

"I did, and thank you," Maura remembered, sitting on the opposite end of the couch herself. The orange-red chair that Jane pretended to hate so much would have been more comfortable, but it would have felt like she was sitting on a throne, not the image she usually sought to encourage. Besides, it clashed with the shade of red she had chosen to wear today. "And thank you, too, for coming by. You're right. They're all hard to handle, but children are always hardest. Chris Anderson was so thin. He looks... he looks cold. Like he's never quite had enough cocoa and soup and hugs."

She would know. And Daniel - Father Brophy - knew it.

Resting his elbows on his knees, Father Brophy laced his fingers together, perhaps in a pointed effort to stop them from reaching the short distance towards Maura. "If it's any consolation, his parents did adore him. It was only recently, with his mother's illness, that they drew back. I'm sure they were simply immersed in their own pain and didn't want to foist any of it off on him." Sympathetic as always, Brophy's voice spoke of the anguish of losing one so young.

Watchful eyes followed the self-restrictive motion of the good father's hands, and this too she understood. She knew him so well. However, this was not the time to bring that up. They knew, and knowing was hard enough without actually speaking it aloud. "That seems a common theme in many interpersonal relationships, doesn't it? The notion that holding back some of yourself, some of your love, will somehow help the other person. A lot of people seem to do that, and I often wonder how many realize consciously that it's not helping the other person, only themselves."

Unlike many people, Brophy's expression never wavered or glazed over. He remained attentive to her every word, no matter how long she babbled. "While John Lennon did say that love was all you need, the family and relationship bonds do better when there's truth and honesty." He paused before adding, "And equality." Looking deeply, piercingly, at Maura, Daniel - _Father Brophy_ \- continued. "But that sounds less like Dr. Isles, pathologist, taking a case to heart, and more like my friend, Maura, who sometimes feels very much alone." Now he dared to reach over one warm, strong hand, and place it on her knee. "Can I help?"

Even as she shook her head dismissively, her smaller hand nudged its way, not atop the priest's but beneath it, and her expressive hazel eyes flooded with salt emotion. "I don't think you can," she suddenly sobbed, words blurring and distorting with the tension in her throat, "but I really wish you could. God, Daniel, how can it feel this bad when everything is going so well?"

His hand quickly, gentle took hers in a manner that was only comforting. "It's all right," Daniel said, offering up the banal comfort he was restricted to, knowing nothing of Maura's actual inner turmoil. "I don't mind that your amygdala and lachrymal gland have a connection you can't control," he added, the dry humor offering support. _Cry all over me_ , his body said. _That's what I'm good for._

Given formal permission, Maura stopped choking back her grief and bent from the waist until her forehead rested on their joined hands, her body wracked with the conflicts she had been saving up for just such a rainy occasion. Between sobs and the occasional hiccup, the petite woman worked out a few words that, she hoped, would be enough for her friend to piece together a picture of what had caused it all, even before those horribly young bodies had intruded on her well-controlled world. She managed to say dating, year, and hiding; nothing could force the actual name of the person from her lips, though normally it was the easiest single syllable she ever uttered.

The clock said it was only ten minutes later, but she would have to check its battery, when Maura ran out of energy to support such vigorous lamentations and sat back, clutching to her visage the wad of facial tissues that had somehow found its way into her hands. Embarrassingly indelicate nose blowing followed, then the dabbing of eyes that would have to be re-made up, and finally she apologized, her voice lightly hoarse. "Daniel, I'm sorry. You, of all people, shouldn't have to be the one to absorb all of this. You take in so much, but this really doesn't belong on your shoulders, or at your feet."

Holding the box of tissues with one hand, Daniel gently rubbed Maura's near arm with his other. "If I couldn't give this up for you, Maura, may it at least provide you some comfort." His warm hand moved to Maura's back, resting below her shoulder. How had he managed to move that much closer to her, that his thigh was so near her own? "I take it this isn't Ian?"

Maura shook her head, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to delve into the unfortunate conclusion of that relationship. She could find no words, but Daniel seemed to be comfortable carrying the conversation for them both. "This sounds far too familiar," he sighed. "But I can't claim lack of understanding this situation. You love him, and he you, I trust." Now Daniel stopped, collecting himself. "I hope he makes the choice that brings you happiness." Unspoken was the apology that Daniel had made the choice for himself, not Maura. He had never apologized, never claimed to regret them.

"It's not," Maura began, then paused, suddenly self-conscious. This was Daniel, whom she had loved and still did, albeit in altered form. This was a man she knew, had _known,_ who knew her. But it was also a priest, a representative of an enormous body of people and an organization that spanned the globe, possessed power and money to make Solomon blush, and which had come down very strongly against some types, and directions, of loving. "I don't want to say this," she stalled. "I don't want you to be required to judge me with harshness right now. I'm a little too close to the surface at the moment."

As well as Maura knew him, Daniel knew her. Perhaps more; she spent her life among distractions, and he spent a goodly portion of his life weeding them out in order to listen ever more closely for the whisper of divine guidance and insight. He had indeed spent many an hour, not all of them in the distant past, contemplating what he had done, what _they_ had done, and the nature of the woman who had made it such a struggle for him to remain committed to his choices. She had said relationship, year, and hiding. There had, he could safely assume, been something lately that would likely look all too familiar to Daniel once he was permitted to look at it.

This was going to sting.

He took a deep breath and gazed into her eyes, which he often had, but this time entirely in order to communicate earnestness and support: things for her, not wishes for himself. "I'm aware of both the practical and, more importantly, the emotional and spiritual difficulties of keeping a relationship of which many others would not approve. And I am bound by vows and honor to keep confidences entrusted to me." He could never be her confessor; Maura was not a Catholic. But he could act with the same discretion, and by his listening, behave as an instrument of his God.

Trepidation flowed into that moment at which fear became hope. Like a house without curtains, Maura never could hide a thing. She took a breath, caught and held it as if afraid to let it flutter away, then released it after all. "I'm with a woman."

Just like that, Brophy knew the entire laundry list of issues that Maura would have. He knew why she would hide; he knew it would pain her; he knew that the other woman would have issues, too. And he knew instantly, having been in a room with both of them at the same time, exactly which woman it was. The only thing he didn't know was, "Which one of you is it that is uncomfortable with being openly together?"

Maura sniffled. "I really thought I could wait until she felt strong enough to be honest with her family. But this case feels like a series of blunt force traumas to my solar plexus, and I just want her to hold me every time I see another young man's body that never got to grow up, and I can't because she's afraid to be with me in public. Just like that last boy we found must have been afraid," she connected without really thinking about it head-on; the image of Taylor Lautner, the cute werewolf's actor who had been featured on Chris Anderson's wall, was still fresh in her mind.

Once she'd said it, however, the nearly audible record-scratch of distraction cut off her concerns for herself and her relationship. It was subtle, on the outside, but Daniel spotted the minute changes in the type of tension she carried. "Maura, what is it? What do you think Chris was afraid of?"

From staring off into space, Maura's eyes zoomed with machine-like precision directly to Daniel's face, already focused – hyper-focused, even - by the time they had landed there. She hated guessing. She hated speculation, supposition. Postulation and hypothesizing were different, but now wasn't the time to argue the minutiae of semantics. Now also wasn't the time to be reticent about having just leaped, with a nearly Jane-esque swiftness and precision, to a conclusion that felt so right, so perfect, that she could not imagine a single scenario in which she could be incorrect. "I think Chris Anderson was gay."

 _And_ , she did not add aloud, _I wonder if the other boys are too?_

Daniel's mouth opened slightly, not preparatory to speaking, but in a manner Maura found familiar. He too was focusing on the facts (though Maura couldn't know what secrets he carried). "I," he started, looking past her shoulder. "I think you're right." Non-judgmental, Daniel's voice cracked. "Oh, God, that poor boy." He was an amazing man, with a caring heart, and clearly Daniel found it impossible not to emphasize with Chris Anderson. A boy who saw no way out. "No wonder this is tearing you up, Maura," he added, his voice a shade too tender for 'just friends.'

Though she'd cried herself all out, the biological impulse to begin again was as strong as ever at the gentle reminder of her own troubles, which suddenly seemed so insignificant. Maura could see many pathways to resolution; those boys had seen none. Those beautiful, young, tender-hearted, fragile boys who would never become men now. She fell against Daniel's chest, hand clutched up by her face in a pose reminiscent of the childhood thumb-sucker that she had been, and she indulged in a long, tired sigh of regret at the loss of those lives. "Ah, Danny," Maura breathed, "this is so wrong." The deaths, the pain and loneliness that caused them, all of it.

"She's _agnostic_!" came the angry shout from a familiar voice, with no warning what so ever. The door had opened at some point during Maura's second sobbing into Daniel's shirt, and there, now, stood a surprisingly angry, no, _pissed_ , Jane Rizzoli, her right hand with a firm grip on her own left, which was poised near her holster. "What the _hell_ is going on!"

Father Brophy turned to see who had come in, not spotting the danger until he identified the woman in the doorway. Immediately he moved, causing Maura to move, both of them with an undercurrent of alarm, and both of them away from one another. "Detective Rizz-," Brophy cleared his throat, "Rizzoli. I just came to offer pastoral care. Dr. Isles seemed unusually distressed earlier at the Anderson boy's parental notification."

 _Why was he explaining?_ Maura wondered, glancing up at him. She had not realized she'd distanced herself physically from Daniel - Father Brophy, she sternly reminded herself - and seeing him at arm's length when her side was still chilled from being removed from contact with him was jarring. Not as jarring, of course, as the sight of Jane, in full fury, standing in her doorway.

In no way was Maura surprised that Jane had made the connection to the relationship betwixt priest and medical examiner so quickly. Jane was one of the best detectives in the state, and her ability to put clues together was one of the many aspects that drew Maura to her. Simply, she loved that Jane was smart in that way Maura could never be. Maura's eyes locked on the gun Jane had visibly restrained herself from drawing. She felt no personal fear, but did notice in the corner of her mind that she had stepped around the couch in the less convenient direction, the direction which put her _between_ her former lover and her current one.

"I was. Am. Extremely upset. You look upset, too. Would you like to come inside and talk?" The words were too formal, and even as she spoke them, Maura knew they were the wrong ones. What the right ones were, however, eluded her. "To me, or to both of us? Father Brophy is a very good listener, as you've often mentioned."

Jane's jaw worked around words that never made it past her lips. Finally she spluttered, "Agnostic!" again. "I don't know what the hell _that_ was, but I've _seen_ pastoral care and -" Jane cut herself off, and Maura could see the horror flowing across her best friend's face. Every piece was put together now. Jane knew.

"I think I should go," Father Brophy said quietly, picking his jacket up without making any sudden movements. No fool, he.

"Ya think!" snarled Jane, and though she stepped aside to let him, the detective fixed the priest with a glare that clearly stated _their_ conversation was not over. Wisely, Brophy said nothing, not even looking at Maura as he made his escape, and closed the door again behind him. "A priest!" Jane snapped, her voice cracking high.

Unable to shut it off, Maura had to absorb what was going on around her even as her brain forced her to catalog all the physical processes at work within her body, the effects of emotions she had never been good at understanding or identifying. Tightening of _these_ muscles, speeding of heart rate and breathing, resumption of attempted tear production, the rushing of blood within her ears that made it hard to hear, rapid cooling from the light perspiration she'd begun to notice all over her body.

As her jaw worked, trying to find words to chew on and offer in explanation, she even noticed the symptoms of similar levels of agitation in Jane, albeit very different in source. Jane's was easy to identify as rage. Her own... She didn't want to call it fear, didn't want to think she could fear the person she knew loved her, but it did feel very, very much like fear.

"Jane, it's... this isn't... I mean, it isn't anymore..." Too late, Maura realized that, far from denying that she was cheating on Jane, could _never_ cheat on her, she had simply handed over the information that yes, indeed, she had slept with a priest. Then another emotion became identifiable upon those beautiful, angular features she loved so much, and Maura found herself clutching her stomach with one hand, reaching for the support of her Kareem Rashid chair with the other as acid built within her, nauseating and burning her. "Oh, God, you're disgusted with me," she moaned, knowing she deserved it.

The veins in Jane's neck stood out. It felt like the time Tommy was arrested all over again, when Jane had lashed out, declared she'd hated Maura, and accused her of hiding behind science. This was so much worse because then they'd 'only' been friends. Now Maura knew exactly what she'd lose if they fought. "How could you?" demanded Jane, not contradicting Maura's statement. "Do you care _that_ little about other people's beliefs?"

Voice filled with ire, Jane's expressive hands flew away, spreading wide in fucks not given about Maura's tears. "For God's sake, Maura! I can't- You know what, no, with the day I'm having I _can_ totally believe this bullshit." With a frustrated cry of anguish, Jane made claws of her hands, but touched nothing. The distance between the women was as wide as the Mariana Trench was long. "How the hell do you justify that!"

Not a single excuse, reason, or justification came to mind, let alone could Maura have spoken them if they had. She could only stand, gasping like a fish for breath, watching as all her chickens came home to roost; except that they weren't chickens. They were big, huge raptors with enormous claws and beaks, and they weren't attacking her. They were attacking Jane. Because of what she, Maura, had done. Her head shook helplessly. Whatever Jane would do or say, she had brought it on herself. Ironically, she thought in some distant place within her awareness, she was now ready for her penance.

In the silence, Jane fumed. Her breathing was loud, pain-filled, agony. "I see," she snarled, more accusatory than Maura had ever heard aimed at her. "I can't... I can't even deal with this, Maura." The hands went up in the air. "I'm going." Roughly reaching for the door, Jane yanked it open so forcefully, she nearly stumbled. "Don't come over tonight," added the raging detective, almost unnecessarily, and she slammed the door behind her.

The sound of Maura's low, anguished wail became more muted, the more doors closed between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Reviews make sure Maura stops crying.** _


	5. Devil's Bargain

Neither a long run, nor kicking the hell out of her boxing dummy, nor cleaning the apartment made Jane feel any less angry. She was pissed at her mother beyond belief, and she knew, in a small part of her brain, that she wasn't actually mad at Maura. Her therapist would have said she was misplacing her anger.

"Damn it, a priest," she growled, angrily washing her windows. Joe, wisely, was hiding under her bed. "Why did it have to be Brophy?" Then again, why wouldn't it be Brophy? He was tall, had that Anderson Cooper vibe. He was, face it, a hottie.

Jane growled in frustration and pressed the heels of her hands into her eye-sockets. Then she stopped and stared at her hands, and their scars. _Sexual deviants belong in the priesthood or the convent, where they can be celibate, and therefore safe from harming their souls_. Why would her brain remember that phrase so clearly? Suddenly Jane felt very cold and wrapped one hand around the other, pressing them to her chest. "That son of a bitch," she whispered. It had to be. No one else would be that horrible.

She flicked on her computer again, bringing up the case notes. One of boys went to St. Gabe's, and was even an altar boy there. Another boy was also an altar boy. That was half. The other two boys had to be connected. Where do four boys, from different neighborhoods, with different passions, all manage to run into one gigantic ass?

"Shit," she muttered and picked up her phone. "Shit, shit, shit." She didn't know his number, but Dispatch could connect her to the last man on earth she wanted to talk to, right after Metzov and her father.

The voice at the other end was polite, pleasant even, "This is Father Brophy. Am I needed?" How else would he answer the phone at the dinner hour?

 _No_ , thought Jane. "It's Detective Rizzoli," she announced, stalling a moment. "I need to talk to you. About the case." Not the shouting. Just the case. She could do this.

Jane could hear the man's intake of breath, so she knew that he held it for a moment before replying. "Of course, Detective. What can I do to help?"

She couldn't blame his nerves, and tried to keep her personal anger out of her voice. "All the churches, you still network a lot? Like when you came to St. Gabe's for a couple months to fill in?" Jane was sure she knew the answer to that question, but she needed to set the tone. Businesslike, and about the church. Not about things priests weren't supposed to be doing.

And yet, mentioning the enormous Catholic network who could all hear of his indiscretions seemed not to be as reassuring to Brophy as either of them would have hoped. He cleared his throat, and a light, repetitive clicking sound advertised the presence of a ballpoint pen being used as a worry stone. "Yes, we're in more or less constant contact. I have breakfast with many of the other priests in my area about every month, and there are other meetings on a more formal basis as well. Why do you ask?"

Jane cleared her throat. "I was remembering, back when John Paul the Second was alive, how big he was about getting young kids into things." Keeping her impressions of Pope Palpatine to herself, she continued, "They got really big when I was in the academy, but I was thinking if they were still around today, maybe you could check some of the attendance lists for some of the other victims."

The pen clicked a few more times as Brophy meditated on this suggestion. "And if I say no, you'll come back with a warrant?"

"Last time I tried to get a warrant against the church, the judge laughed me out of court," she confessed, grimly, and Brophy chuckled a dry laugh. "I'm not asking for a list of names. I just want to give you a list."

Finally Brophy sighed. "Give me the names." He dutifully listened as Jane read them off, and asked her to wait a moment. "You just want the ones that had all four boys?"

"At least two," she asked. "Thank you."

The silence dragged out for a while. "Don't thank me too soon. Chris Anderson wasn't a formal member of any church, or church-associated event."

Shit. "Course not, that'd be too easy," groaned Jane. She expected a curt goodbye and a return phone call later, but to her surprise, Brophy asked her to hang on just a minute, and she heard keys clicking. It was still something of a surprise to her that churches and priests had dragged themselves into the computer age.

"I'm searching all records for groups that contain the names Chris Anderson, Robby Auson, Jake Graff, James Smith," said Brophy as he typed and clicked and waited for his machine to whir into action for him. "Any two or more of the above, in the order of most to least. Searching and compiling information from all databases, all Catholic organizations in the Greater Boston area."

Almost a full minute passed, before he had an answer. "I've got a handful of events, two churches, and a couple of church or multiple church sponsored groups or activities. Would you like me to read them off to you, or send them as a fax or email?"

A fax. How quaint. Okay, so they weren't _entirely_ up to modern times yet. "Email," she smiled and then said, without thinking, "Course if any were related to St. Gabe's, that'd be great."

Brophy's reply sounded similarly off the cuff, "Father Metzov does manage the Facebook youth page -"

"Father _Paul_ Metzov?" Because only a universe in which Maura slept with a priest would be cruel enough to have two jerkface priests with that name. "Wait, what group?"

"I see you know him," muttered Brophy, whose own visit to Jane's church had been when they'd traded away Metzov to someone else for a while. Those were the only weeks, other than Father Petey's, when she'd bothered to attend services at St. Gabe's since she'd moved out on her own. "He's not very popular with young women. The group is, hold on." Brophy typed for a moment. "Ah, here we are. It's a group called _Wrestling with Faith._ Here's the group description: _An invite-only group for young men, struggling with their commitment to Catholicism, due to pressures from the outside world. If you, like many others, are doubting your place in our Church, we have room for you. Contact..._ You get the idea."

Based on Brophy's tone, Metzov didn't sound all that popular with priests who had a clue. And in the wording of that Facebook group, Jane felt the ghostly, slimy, fingers of a man who had corrupted her mother's faith. He destroyed with love. Jane mulled over her options. "What if I told you I thought Father Metzov was ... encouraging kids to kill themselves? Because they were gay?"

No immediate response was forthcoming, but in the background, the clicks on Brophy's computer keyboard were replaced by the ones from the ballpoint pen once more. He wasn't dismissing the question out of hand, which meant that it was not something he _could_ dismiss out of hand. As disturbing as that realization was, Jane was also gratified. Silence was almost as good as him saying he'd buy it.

Then the gratification turned sour as Brophy confirmed it for her. "You're not one of the detectives that comes up with a harebrained notion and then works hard to support it, past the point of ridiculousness. I know some people think you are, but it's just because your mind seems to process things much more quickly than their minds process things. If you thought that, Detective Rizzoli, then I would have to believe you had good reason to think it. And I would feel..."

He chewed over his wording, as if not wanting to have the detective take his statement as being more than what it was. "Paul - Father Metzov, that is - is very committed to his vocation, very serious. Pious. Prayerful. But he has a few bugaboos, and one of them is homosexuality. It's not enough for him to say that homosexuals ought to be celibate, which personally I think is an unrealistic goal at best. For Father Metzov, he truly does believe that non-heterosexual orientation is a sign of spiritual sickness or weakness. He believes that homosexuals should be, and _can_ be, cured, but that ideally they'd belong to the priesthood, where they could be taught self-control and watched carefully for signs that they were giving in to their deviant impulses. His wording, not mine."

The memory locked in. "Priesthood, where they can be safe from harming their souls," she recited. Brophy made a displeased noise, but said nothing more to stop her. "You know, I remember the first time I heard him say that. He was just lucky my Nonna was there." Not that her grandmother had held her tongue. The car trip home had been filled with incendiary comments and choice Italian words young-adult Jane had filed away for later use.

She realized as well that in his clarification, Brophy forgot to be quite as nervous of Jane, and simply spoke in his careful, focused way, the way she'd always found both comforting and interesting before that afternoon. He seemed to be both controlled and intense - but then, one can't be controlled without something that needed to be controlled in the first place. This, Jane realized, might be what had interested Maura.

She fought down the twist of anger in her stomach to focus on Brophy's statement. "Well, Detective, he thinks the priesthood is the place for deviants in general. Not because deviance is a priestly quality, but Father Metzov feels, as he's explained it to me, that these people - mind you, I don't always agree with him on what constitutes deviance - but he thinks that they can eventually have their energies redirected to what he thinks are more healthy activities and more spiritually edifying ways of thinking and feeling. Also, he thinks that priests would keep a better eye on their own than could be kept on laypeople. If only that were true," he broke for a moment in a lower voice, "we wouldn't have so many children suffering from abuse by the clergy, but I suppose that's a matter for another day."

"Okay, what are you saying?" Jane asked, impatient now for him to come to some sort of conclusion." He really was like a God'n'Jesus version of Maura, complete with Bible Google-mouth.

"I'm saying," replied the priest on the other end of the line, "that Father Paul Metzov is homophobic, yet with a sincere belief that he is trying to be kind. I have actually heard him saying to... a fellow member of the religious life... that being born homosexual was a spiritual handicap or illness, an equivalent of cancer, and that just like cancer, one should treat it aggressively in order to root out all the effects of the evil. This was to an adult, someone fairly strong as a man, and it reduced him to tears. And I've heard other, similar things over the years I've known him, as well. I can't imagine being a teenager and having to hear that. So if you were to tell me that Father Metzov was encouraging gay children to take their own lives, or was saying something else that might be taken by vulnerable youths as indicating that their lives weren't worth living," he concluded, regret and disapproval equally heavy in his normally light, tenor voice, "I would be dismayed, but not as surprised as I wish I could say I would be."

Jane closed her eyes. And this was the cretin who was worming his way into her mother's everlasting soul. "Shit," she said out loud, unthinking of who it was on the phone. The pen clicked a few times, but Brophy didn't chastise her use of language. "Damn it, there's no way in hell, sorry Father, that I'm gonna get a warrant to dig into Metzov's life and find out if he's pulling that same crap on kids like he tried on me."

To his credit, Brophy didn't ask for further information about what crap Metzov pulled on Jane. "There is," he slowly suggested, "An alternative. Someone, perhaps, who already has an in with the church might be willing to join Metzov's group and report back."

Against all odds, Jane smiled. "Father Brophy, are you offering to spy on your own church?"

* * *

"No," Maura sighed into her cellphone as she leaned back against the tub walls, her other hand listlessly lifting up a palmful of water, then letting it trickle through her fingers, the light motion stirring the scent she had put into the water to calm herself. "I mean, yes, I do want to see you, Daniel, but I really shouldn't. I would want to see my friend, and right now that's not a safe thing for you to be."

Father Daniel Brophy's voice was as clear ever, his lovely Irish tenor that sounded so well at hymns, but no longer as light as she usually heard it, as he questioned her with an effort at sounding merely concerned, not tense.

"I don't think so, no. Jane's not a violent person, no matter how mad she gets, unless someone is engaged in a felony." She lifted a foot out of the bath water and mused idly about whether she should re-paint her nails or leave them bare. _Oh, what's the point? Jane won't be thinking they're cute for a while, whether I polish them or not._ "She wouldn't really hurt you. She's just upset to have learned that we're both capable of..." Maura paused, searching out the correct phrasing; Daniel supplied it for her, and she repeated it. "Human error. Yes. I hope she realizes that that's in the past for us, but if you visited me tonight and she came here after all, she would doubt that. I don't want to cause her to doubt me. More."

A few minutes later she rang off, tossed the cellphone into her little basket of neatly rolled hand towels and facial cloths, and tried, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to let the hot water give her muscles the relaxation that had failed to materialize with yoga and a three-mile jog.

Some time later, Maura stood over the stove, pulling pan-seared chicken breasts onto plates and drizzling them with a light sauce she had made; string-cut zucchini formed a base that mimicked the general texture and attitude of spaghetti, though not the taste. She set the table, brought out two glasses and poured wine, and then cursed herself for a fool. Cooking for two had become a habit, and now that there was only one person at the table, that second place setting felt like it was mocking her.

 _Oh, well._ She would make immediate use of her own portion, then box up the other for lunch at work tomorrow. She began to eat in small, slow bites, making it last longer, the way conversation would normally have done.

When the side door opened, Maura's heart leaped, hoping perhaps Jane had realized her own stubbornness, and come to apologize. Instead, the trepidation filled visage of Jane's mother, Angela, poked around the corner. Her eyes landed on two dishes. "Is Jane coming?" asked Angela, abnormally cautious.

Dejected, murky eyes lifted slowly from their gaze at the full, untouched plate at Jane's place. "No. I just... forgot."

The other woman looked, inexplicably, relieved, and slid into the empty chair. "You look like you could use some company," offered the brash woman. "Do you mind ...?" She gestured at the plate and herself.

Maura's shoulder twitched upward in a gesture of uncaring before she could call her upbringing to bear and gesture more politely towards the seat and its associated dinner. "Please do. Distract me?"

If the two women had bonded over the time that Angela had lived in her guest house, it was over distractions. Divorce on the one hand, dating woes on the other, and Jane in the middle, they had never lacked for things to worry about. They had also never run out of ways to provide one another with diversions from those worries when the need arose, such as now. Maura hoped for anything that would get her out of her own head, just for a little while.

She had not, alas, expected to hear Angela's lament about a fight with Janie that she didn't want to talk about. "She's being unreasonable, you know that way she gets when she only sees _her_ way about the whole thing?" Angela cut the chicken breast and took a savage bite. "She's just like her father when she gets this way. This is the part of Frank I don't miss. But I don't wanna talk about it," she added, contradicting herself. "I don't. This is really good! Tell me what you put on the chicken, Maura."

"Dijon mustard, some spices," Maura recited them all, and their proportions, dully. Oh, she made the effort to sound animated and involved, but simultaneously she was making the effort to distance herself from mention of Jane, and in the end, neither endeavor was successful. "I'll write that down for you later."

Eying the last bits of her chicken and zucchini, she sighed. She didn't want to eat the rest. She did it anyway; her daily caloric count depended on this meal to be accurate. Her pleasant, round face felt heavy, as if she had lost the will to keep the muscles and skin firmly anchored to her facial bones. "Angela, do you..." she started, then shook her head. Nothing she could think of to discuss was anything close to safe. "Do you want dessert? I have some berries we could toss together into a salad. I might still have a little Devonshire cream we could dollop on top."

"Oh, no, that chicken filled me up," Angela deferred, but looked around again. "Did you and Janie have a fight too?" For a woman who claimed to not want to talk about the argument she had with her daughter, Angela was doing a pretty good job of sticking to that topic closely. "I mean, ever since I moved, she's either here, or you're there, except when your friend Ian was visiting." Angela held her hands up ward off commentary, "I know, you're best friends, you two love each other like sisters. I got used to seeing you in her back pocket."

Having nowhere else to do it, Maura spat what wine she had coughed up into her throat, nose, and breathing passageway right into the remnants of Dijon sauce on her plate; she'd struggled to find her napkin, but it had slipped off her lap and onto the floor during one of the uncomfortable shifts she had done with her posture. Angela's concern was sweet, but added another layer of discomfort as Maura attempted to breathe again while coming up with a truthful but entirely misleading explanation. _Sisters,_ her mind fought against hysteria, dredging up the lyrics to a song she'd heard in a musical once, having taken Jane to see it for her birthday. _Hey, Mister! We're sisters! We're close!_ That wouldn't do. "Sorry," she choked out as her face gradually lost its redness once her airway was clear again. "Swallowed wrong."

Concerned like only a mother could be, Angela got up and gently patted Maura's back as she coughed. Now was not the time to correct her, Maura knew, but mentally noted she'd have to teach Angela the proper lifesaving maneuver later. "You could choke, trying to do that," admonished Angela, and she quickly took away Maura's plate to the sink, coming back with a damp cloth. "If you don't want to talk about what's going on with you and Janie, _believe_ me, I understand. Sometimes you just need some space."

Grateful for the reprieve caused by her own overreaction, Maura simply nodded. "Space," she agreed, and accepted the cloth to dab at a spot on the tablecloth where she'd missed the plate. "I... Maybe. I don't want it, but I think Jane does right now. Did... I wonder if the fight with you had anything to do with the fight... Well, no, probably not. That really was my fault. If I hadn't-" Abruptly the younger woman snapped her mouth shut. She had been about to spill everything she and Jane had agreed to keep to themselves until further notice.

For once, Maura had a little luck. Angela was too wrapped up in her own drama to catch on to Maura's slip. "She stormed out of talking to me," lamented Angela, loading up the dishwasher with the same haphazard manner as her daughter. At least Jane put everything in with the same arrangement as Maura preferred. "And the names she called me before, my God, if she was a little girl, I'd wash her mouth out with soap after turning her over my knee!"

Good fortune smiled again, not that either woman noticed it: Maura was sufficiently distracted from her own Jane-related problems by those of Jane's mother. "She called you names?" The restrictively-reared younger woman didn't know whether to be aghast at the idea that Jane had called her own mother names, or jealous that she'd at least stuck around long enough to do that. "That's... That's horrible," she decided aloud. "I'm so sorry she did that. That doesn't sound like Jane at all. Has she ever done that before?"

"No. Never, not even when I ... Never." Angela sighed and twisted the dishcloth in her hands. "She said she was ashamed to be my daughter," whispered the older woman. "How am I gonna... I already lost her father. I got back Tommy, but I don't want to lose Janie. She's the rock in the family."

Had this been Jane in front of her, Maura would have known what to do. As it was, she did the same thing for the mother that she would have done for the daughter, but she wasn't entirely certain, even as she stood beside Angela's chair and pulled her in for a hug, Angela's cheek to her stomach, whether it was the right thing.

"Jane loves you," she promised fervently as she gently rocked the maternal woman's shoulders back and forth by swaying, something Jane had often called soothing. "She'd never have said such a thing unless she was terribly hurt. I don't know what happened, and you don't have to tell me, but I'm here. And I know that whatever happened wouldn't have hurt her if she didn't love you so much, if you were just some random person she could forget once you were out of her eyesight. You still have a chance to fix whatever happened between you."

Angela's hand twitched, as if to bring the dishcloth to her face, but instead reached over for her unused paper napkin and blew her nose with a shockingly loud honk. On any other occasion, it might have been cause for Jane and Maura to smirk at each other. "She told me to go to hell," wailed Angela, her voice passing out of the audible range of human hearing rather quickly.

Without moving from her spot, Maura glanced around, noting the location of the nearest pad of paper and pencil just in case. "Oh, Angela. I'm so, _so_ sorry. But I'm having trouble even visualizing Jane saying anything like that without feeling very, very hurt, or very, very angry. Or both." _I did that,_ Maura thought, not aware that her own confrontation had, in fact, been the second incident in Jane's rotten day, and not the first. "I've only ever heard her tell one person to go to hell, and..." She paused, then, shocked: Jane had used that expression with Hoyt, just before she rid the world of him. This wasn't just a mother-daughter conflict that got out of hand. It was _serious_. "Why on earth would Jane tell _you_ to go to hell?" she burst out.

It took Angela a few minutes to find her voice again. "Because of the Church," she sobbed.

"Church?" Maura echoed, confounded. "What about the Church?" Jane never went to churches outside of cases, and she rarely talked about religion with Maura. Or anyone, for that matter.

"That it teaches hate," sniffled Angela. "That this was hate filled!" With that, she pulled a once crumbled, now carefully folded piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it in Maura's general direction. "She said we're doing more harm than good!"

Maura accepted the flyer, read it, and loosened her hold on it so that only thumb and forefinger delicately pinched one corner. She felt soiled. "I can see why she would say that," Maura said mildly, offering the page back. "Promoting a religion in the workplace, at the very least, would be highly inappropriate if not illegal. And I can see why it would put her in a bad mood, too," added the woman as she discreetly wiped her fingers again on her napkin. No explanation was forthcoming; she seemed to feel it would be superfluous, as if the reason for the upset was perfectly obvious.

Without thinking, Angela took the paper back and looked at Maura, abhorrent. Jane's expression had been one of anger and jealousy, but Angela's was pure disgust. It made Maura feel even dirtier, and she knew very well that she hadn't done anything wrong this time. "You too?" rasped Angela, her voice lower than normal.

"It's a little..." Maura searched for the most accurate phrasing. "The wording looks like something designed to make it sound loving, and yet it can't be, can it? The foremost quality of love is that it doesn't judge or condescend. This is saying that someone's inner nature is just not good enough for the deity that supposedly formed it. I find the ideas overtly expressed in this flyer and the ideas tacitly expressed to be contradictory to one another."

While talking, Maura stepped away to wash her hands, then fetch two glasses of water. "Even putting that aside, numerous studies have demonstrated that a person's sexuality cannot be altered. They can force themselves to behave differently from what their nature dictates - which is psychologically damaging, to say the very least - but that nature itself does not change."

"Which is exactly why we want them to stop being gay! Then everything would be better!" It was almost like Angela was hearing the words, but not really processing what it was that Maura had meant. Thick skulled, stubborn, just like her daughter, who clearly had not inherited the trait from only one parent. "You're just like Janie, taking their side, even though you know it's wrong!"

The standing woman's caramel head tilted to one side. Angela's response indicated that either she had misunderstood, or not even heard, Maura's well-reasoned points. That sometimes happened when people were shouting; she mentally reviewed the previous minute or two and determined that, no, she had kept her volume respectably conversational, not raising her voice at all. "Well, yes and no. Yes, I believe I do hold the same position on the subject as Jane. No, I don't know, or think, or believe, that it's wrong. It's just a way of being. I don't see any reason to view one person's innermost nature as being superior to any other person's innermost nature."

Angela was agog. "It's your, your _European_ schools. Those fancy boarding schools did this to you."

This was met with a different type of head tilt, this one indicative of qualified agreement. _She's not entirely wrong,_ Maura thought with a mental smirk which, fortunately, did not go so far as to appear on her face. Jane would have found that statement hilarious. "You mean they taught me critical thinking?"

Spluttering, and looking like her daughter as she did so, Angela stood up and almost knocked her chair over. "You support these ... these sinners? Condemning these poor people to hell?" The way she said 'people' and not 'children' was telling. Angela knew nothing about the case Maura was embroiled in at this time.

"If I believed in a hell, I would be concerned about people going there," Maura agreed politely. "As it is, I am neither convinced of the existence of a deity, nor invested in determining the truth of the matter. Claiming, therefore, to know the mind of any postulated deity, therefore, not to mention a theoretical hell that such a loving deity would create in order to punish people for acting in accordance with the nature with which he supposedly endowed them, would be gross hubris on the one hand, and delusional on the other."

Angela grabbed her paper off the dining table and shook it in Maura's direction. "I'm going to pray for them. And I'm going to pray for- for godless heathens like you!"

"Thank you," Maura replied with increasingly forced ease, if there was such a thing. "In the event that there is a deity, I'm sure I could benefit as much from the prayers as you could from the practice."

Angela said nothing save a squeak of indignation and stomped out of Maura's kitchen, slamming doors in an alarmingly familiar manner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Reviews bring Maura and Jane back together. Sorry about the Captain and Tennille joke.** _
> 
> _**Before you ask, these two scenes wrap around each other. Brophy talked to Maura in her bath** _ **before _he was called by Jane that night._**


	6. Car-Blocked

The electronic map of Boston glared at Jane like a malignant hangover. Frost had been up all night, sticking virtual pins in every location he could find for the boys. When Jane had strolled in at five AM, with coffee, and handed him the Facebook information from Brophy, they'd started plugging those data points in. At eight, Korsak brought them more coffee, and a calorically overloaded breakfast of potatoes and eggs. It was fantastic.

With the new information, they had enough circumstantial evidence that, in a normal case, would net them a warrant to pin the bastard to the wall and search his place for evidence of enticing kids to suicide. But Metzov was barricaded behind the church, which meant no judge was going to give them bupkis without serious, hard, evidence. Like a bloody knife.

Knowing their best hope was in another priest, Jane caught them up on what Brophy had offered. "I don't know if it'll do any good. Metzov's got pretty strong opinions about stuff, and Brophy's... soft."

Eating his egg whites and fruit, Korsak shook his head. "When I was an altar boy, the priest'd pick us up from school in his station wagon. If he tried that today, we'd hang 'em high!"

"What?" Frost asked, turning away from the computer to display his confusion to the other two. "Why would it be a problem? If they're picking them up in groups, no one's alone with him, so there's not going to be any..." one hand wiggled in the air to indicate sketchy circumstances, "...shenanigans."

"That's not as much of an impediment as you'd think," Jane mentioned. "Remember reading in the news about that dickberry in Ohio? He took students out like that, in groups, and he still managed to get some dirty stuff done. I'm telling you, abusers will find a way, whatever the circumstances are. And you know, the Bro Code means nobody's ever going to talk about it. Takes balls to come forward, as a girl, to say something's been done. Guys? No way, they don't want to be seen as un-manly." She snorted, "Never hurt _me_ not to be thought of as a man, but I can't explain that to you, so sometime one of you will have to explain it to me."

While Jane had explained the depravity of man, Korsak had looked with open longing at her hash browns. "It's not our fault any more than its a girl's fault she wants to wear pretty dresses and make up," he pointed out. Both men looked at Jane curiously, and felt justifiably nervous at the expression they saw there. "Most girls," amended Korsak, and when it didn't seem to help, tried again. "Girls like Doc Isles."

Jane arched an eyebrow. "Hole? Digging. Deeper," she bit out at Korsak.

Her bad mood was apparent and Korsak coughed. "Point is, we get told not to show emotion. Get hit in the jewels? Shake it off or you're not a man. We're taught crap like that all the time. It's why any time a guy starts doing anything girly, we give him shit. We're told to." Korsak gestured at Frost, "Your old man's in the Navy, you know how that goes."

Frost looked away, suddenly pensive. "You're right," he agreed. "I got that 'real men...' speech every year for my birthday. Plus assorted holidays, random guy weekends going camping or fishing, and pretty much any time he'd had more than one beer."

The hash browns were suddenly no longer appealing, and Jane pushed her plate towards Korsak. "What would you have done if Josh was gay?" she asked Korsak, curious and terrified at the same time.

The big man sighed and looked at the pictures of the dead kids. "Probably screwed him up. I wanna say I'd love him no matter what, but I'm sure I'd'a done the wrong things a dozen times. Especially before I knew. I mean, you just assume people are straight, because nine times out of ten it's true. Or at least, nine times out of ten that's what anybody'll cop to."

He might have gone on in that vein for some time - Vince was feeling philosophical, as he often did when it was kids who were dying - but the phone rang. Being closest, Barry picked it up while Vince dug into the remaining hash browns, speaking first in his normal tone, and then in a darker one as Jane and Korsak waited. He looked up at them while listening to the phone, and Jane, hash brown free, noticed his expression changing.

"Tell me it's not," she began, but already knew she was out of luck there.

"Nope," Barry said, voice dropped to the dull tone of one not even as concerned with losing his lunch as with the fact that he was once again the bearer of the most horrible news anyone could hear. "We've got another one. Another boy. Better get the Doc."

* * *

Another dead boy. Another sobbing mother. This time the young man lay on the ground, thrown from his desk chair by the force of a bullet through his skull. The gun, a nine-millimeter his single-mother said was hers from when she'd been in the Coast Guard. "I kept it for protection," she'd sobbed, until Korsak had taken her to sit down with a family counselor.

"She doesn't want a priest," Korsak announced, on his return. "Said it was their fault. I think you're on to something, Jane."

Even so, the room was tense, awkward, as both Jane and Maura looked at the body. The EMTs had come and gone, though CSU was still processing them for trace outside. "Apparent suicide, though I won't be certain until I can bring him back to my lab," said Maura, her voice duller than normal. "Notice the stippling around his mouth. GSR tests on his hand will confirm, but based on body positioning, it's unlikely anyone was holding the gun for him."

As Maura gently probed the skull, Jane looked around for the bullet, found it, and waved CSU over for evidence tagging. "They go to the same church as the Ausons," she said, looking at the fancy computer setup, now splattered with blood, brain bits, and blowback. "Frost, do you think we can get anything off that?"

"Depends on how good he was at covering his tracks. We should take the whole thing back, dust for prints. I can use the hard drive while they're doing that," he assured Jane, as if she knew what all that meant. Jane knew as much about computers as she did cars, and most of that meant leaving repairs to the experts. "These kids all are real good at turning off their phone's GPS, or using anonymous emails for Twitter and Facebook."

"Welcome to the computer era," sighed Jane, thinking about how much easier it would have been to have a secret relationship when you could hide it online from ignorant parents.

Abruptly there was a sound from the computer. "You've got mail!" it sang out, startling Jane out of her train of thought.

All three detectives, the medical examiner, and the uniforms in the room turned to look at the computer. "Frost..." Jane gestured and the youngest detective walked to the computer.

"It's a video alert." There was a brief moment of typing. "Looks like he uploaded it and it just finished rendering." Frost glanced over his shoulder and looked at Jane and Korsak, beseechingly. "Looks like he uploaded it right before..."

Jane looked at Korsak, and spoke for him, "Play it."

_The video cut in, abruptly, as if something else was cut off. The living, breathing Brandon Thorne was addressing the video. His nose was running, and he had clearly been crying. At this point, all he managed were hiccup-studded sobs. "- I can't do this. It doesn't get better! I can't live like this anymore." He looked off to one side and reached out with his right hand, picked up an object. By the movement of his upper arm and shoulder, weight was telegraphed maybe a pound, maybe as much as two._

"Oh Jesus, God, Mary, and Joseph," whispered Korsak, looking away. They all knew exactly what the object was. It was there, in Brandon's hand, right now. Jane caught sight of Korsak's hands, trembling visibly.

_"I really tried, you know?"_

_Brandon spoke to the object in his hand, not to the camera, not even to his own image onscreen as so many vloggers did. "I tried. I started the Gay-Straight Alliance at school. We only have nine members... Well, eight tomorrow. But it helped a little bit, knowing there was even one more gay kid. Even one more straight kid that didn't think we were gross or want us to change, or die and go to hell, or try sleeping with some poor girl just to make people think we were gay - like that wouldn't screw her up just as bad as it'd screw me up, right?"_

_The dully gleaming edge of something round and narrow entered the lower portion of the screen, then lowered again as he tested the item's heft and feel. "But outside the GSA, nothing really changes. People in the club don't want anybody to know they're in it. People outside the club make fun of it, and so do some of the teachers. Nobody wants to tell their parents they're getting crap from everyone else, because then the parents and the school administration will want to know why we're getting crap. Gee, Dad, I guess they just don't like the way I look... oh, and the fact that they have to share a locker room with me. Yeah, go ahead, tell your parents you're getting harassed for being a pervert. That'll go over like a lead balloon." Small muscle movements in upper arms and shoulders attested to the manipulations of some smaller muscles in hands or forearms, punctuated by light, irregular clicks. Fumblings._

Jane dared a look at Korsak. Everyone else was riveted to the video in horror, so only Jane saw him shaking in agony. "Vince, go," she said as softly as possible. The partners locked eyes and Vince didn't even nod before stepping outside. Beside Jane, Maura was the only other person in the room to notice. Silently, with her eyebrows only, Maura asked Jane what the hell was going on. "Later," mouthed Jane, touching Maura's upper arm. They both looked at Jane's hand, but as the video continued, Jane did not remove it.

_The camera shook with Brandon's movements and the picture dims, then righted itself, over-correcting momentarily into too much brightness before settling down._

_Brandon's voice had gotten a little less quiet, a little more shaky. Sweat glistened on his flushed face with the effort of restraining volume while letting loose the torrent of emotions too long held in check. "I just don't get it. God may not make garbage, but then what am I? I know I didn't choose this. It's not a choice. How could it be a choice? If it was, I could just say, okay, I'm not gay. I don't want to be gay! I want to be straight. Come on, who wakes up and says what'll I do today? I could go shoot some hoops, or I could just go out and become something society, my folks, and God hate? Yeah, I don't think so. You know, I could be dating Lissy Vanderhoeft right now. She wanted to. I wanted to_ want _to kiss her, and the other stuff. I don't want to be thinking about a guy, when I'm trying to kiss a girl like I mean it." He wiped his nose on his bare arm, forgetting - or not caring - that his tank top had no sleeves to absorb mucus._

_"And I mean, I prayed. I prayed every day, all the time. I'm an altar boy, for Chri- for goodness' sake. I go to confession, I do my rosaries, I'm always in church so much that my mom thinks I want to be a priest. Like the priesthood would even want me, no matter what he says. But I prayed. Jesus Lord, please change me! Make me normal! God, all the time I prayed, like the Fathers told me to. And the thing is, nothing ever changes except I feel guiltier every time. The priest, he even told me I shouldn't even speak the name of Jesus with lips that have been where mine have been. I don't know, he's probably right." Again, Brandon wiped his nose on his arm; the slick sensation distracted him enough to make him reach for something - a shirt from the laundry basket behind him - to blow his nose on. "So, yeah. I'm gay. I'm a faggot. I'm a pervert. It's a bigger sin than theft, blasphemy, abortion, divorce, coveting, and murder. The Bible calls it an abomination, being gay."_

Wincing, Jane's hand twitched on Maura's arm. Their argument before was so stupid now. None of that mattered. She would apologize as soon as they were outside. She would crawl on her hands and knees over broken glass, if that's what it took. For now, it would have to suffice that she was touching Maura, and not stopping.

_Brandon sighed. "So I guess I'm going to hell for what I've been doing and what I'm about to do. But trust me on this. If 'It Gets Better'," he said in a mocking tone, finally looking dead-on into the camera lens, "it sure as hell doesn't get better fast enough." His hand, now preternaturally steady, held his mother's gun just below his mouth._

_"And where I'm going can't possibly be as bad as the hell I've already been living."_

_His lips opened for the cold, hard shaft of steel, then closed around it in a disgusting mockery of what he, as a young gay man, should have been able to do for enjoyment or even love. With one hand, he pressed a button and the video ended._

Frost turned off the video off, and the computer. "I'll bag it for evidence," he said, hoarsely, only now noticing Korsak was gone. They all looked at the young body, strewn on the floor beside them. Brandon's face, or what was left of it, was obscenely serene at last, in marked contrast to the wall behind his chair, splattered in brilliant red and tiny globs of grey. Jane's hand slowly fell away from Maura, coming to rest on her own gun belt.

After swallowing, Jane managed, "I'll get a subpoena to get the video taken down." She stepped outside of the room, pausing only to give Maura an apologetic look. Korsak was at the end of the hall, his face pressed to the window. First the DA's office, then her partner. The DA took no time to convince, and the judge even less. Now the hardest part. "Vince..."

He was still wearing his purple gloves, breathing deeply through his mouth. "God, Janie, it hurts." Korsak's voice was wet and thick, all evidence of his tears. He needed comfort, and Jane put one hand on his shoulder. When it had all been too much for her, she'd unashamedly sobbed into his shoulder, smearing her nose on his jacket. Their friendship could withstand this as well.

"If you can't do this, Vince, Frost and I can cover."

Korsak shook his head. "I can't. I never told Sean." It was a mark of his distress that he called their lieutenant by his given name, instead of Cavanaugh. The big man clawed at the window for a moment until Jane reached around him and opened it. He inhaled deeply. "God, Janie, I could have."

She put both hands on his shoulders. "You didn't, Korsak. You just ... got a million cats and dogs." They both laughed bleakly. "You didn't, and you won't. Cause you've got me. You've got us. All of us."

He took another big breath. "I can't tell her. You gotta."

Jane sighed. She was going to, eventually, have to tell Korsak and Frost. "You tell Frost, okay?" Inspiration hit and she almost smiled. "I'll ride back with Maura and tell her."

Nodding, Korsak exhaled explosively through his nose. "You two havin' a fight?"

"No, I'm just an idiot, Vince." They smiled, the comfort of an old friendship, and Korsak muttered a 'screw it' before hugging Jane. "Hey, hey it's okay, old man. We're good." Now it was her comforting Korsak, being a shoulder for him.

"You're good people, Janie," he said, hugging her like a father, or an uncle.

"Don't call me Janie."

* * *

Maura's jaw was clamped shut with unaccustomed tightness. She wanted to be in her car, driving away from here, _alone,_ and not in silence next to her... girlfriend? former girlfriend? whatever, they weren't speaking to each other... and wondering how she got roped into giving Jane a ride which she should have been getting with Frost. They had all arrived together; what was so wrong with all departing together, and leaving her in peace? Did she have to be stuck in a car with the woman she loved more than the rest of the world combined, when that woman had last looked at her with loathing? That reassuring hand on her shoulder at the crime scene had been helpful, but baffling, and Maura did not like to be baffled. She sped up, skirting dangerously close to traffic citation flirtation, just to get the ride over with faster.

"Slow down, baby," Jane suggested, clearly hoping the ride would take a bit longer so she could work up to what she needed to say. The term of endearment had come out naturally, not purposefully, but once it had, she felt nervous about it, and then had to apologize. "Sorry. I know we're fighting. But I've got a couple things I really have to tell you, and it's really important that we not be interrupted with getting in and out of the car and passing through security."

"Then you have until we get back to the station," Maura said coolly, or so she hoped. Mostly she thought she sounded petulant.

"Vince Korsak once tried to kill himself."

Maura pulled over. "You have my attention."

Jane waited until the car was parked, in an actual parking spot and not just on the side of the street. "It was after Melody left, with Josh. He didn't ... Korsak took it real hard." Jane absently tapped her holstered gun, "He was worse than I was after Hoyt, in a lot of ways. I had my family, and I've got you now. He just had the job."

Unspoken was the admittance that a job where you regularly saw people on the worst, most horrific day of their lives, was not the best for anyone suffering emotional issues. "One day, Korsak doesn't show up for work. He's my TO, my training officer, and I remember being pissed at him. If he flakes, I fail, and I wanted to be a detective so bad, Maura. So I tell the lieutenant that his car broke down, and I'm gonna pick him up."

"When I got there, I saw him through the window, gun in his mouth." She looked over at Maura, eyes wet but steady. "Just like this kid, he was gonna blow his own damn brains out." Maura didn't have to ask what happened next, as Jane went on. "I kicked in the door and he dropped it. I held this guy, this big, tough cop, and he just bawled like a baby." Jane reached across the center console toward Maura, but stopped, cognizant of the current complications between them, and how it probably superseded comfort just now. "We don't talk about it. He can't. But a couple months later, he rescued this cat from a crime scene, named him Lestrade, and... You know the rest."

One hand covered Maura's mouth, but her eyes alone were enough to tell the sadness she felt for the grizzled teddy bear of a man. "Oh, poor Vince," she said in a small voice. "This case must be so painful for him. Even more than for the rest of us." Her shoulders hunched, making her seem smaller. Childlike. "And I've been so self-absorbed, I didn't even notice."

Jane gave in to her feelings and unclipped her seat belt so she could put her hand on Maura's near knee. She needed to touch Maura, and it was somewhat promising that Maura didn't shove her hand aside. "He does a good job hiding it," she pointed out and then added, "I'm an ass, Maura. I'm sorry. You know, what I ... I was being ..."

Maura could have resisted the impulse to insert her own opinion, heavily colored by hurt. She could have, but she didn't. "Inconsiderate, unreasonable, asinine?"

Jane looked guilty, though no more than she felt. "All of that. I was angry. I'm _still_ angry, but it's stupid to be angry at you over something that's over." There wasn't even a tinge of doubt in her voice. She trusted Maura.

"I still hate it when you hate me," replied the smaller woman, but she hunched marginally closer, having decided to go ahead and derive some comfort from Jane's touch on her knee. Grudgingly. "I've decided I hate it more when you think I'm a bad person."

"I don't hate _you_ ," Jane was quick to say. "And ... I hate the part of me that thinks you're a bad person." She made a fist with her right hand. "God, you don't even know how bad I want to be able to cut that out of me. But it's in there so deep, I don't know if I'd ever get rid of it." Jane had to look away, at anything else, but her hand never left Maura's knee. "If that's wrong then _we're_ wrong, and I can't believe God would ever want love to be wrong!" Her voice was filled with agony. All those damned Catholic fears landing at once caused tears to slide down Jane's face. "And I love you. I. Love. You. That's all that matters, right?"

A droplet of her own tears splashed and smashed apart on the upper curve of Maura's breast. "No," she had to say, turning back towards the steering wheel. "Not if there's a part of you that still thinks I'm a bad person." She started up the car.

The car turned off abruptly, before Maura could change gears or even touch the gearshift.

Jane held up the keyfob Maura had, oh so intelligently, given her months ago. Because the advanced options she'd purchased for her new Prius let you turn your car on and off with just the keyfob or the start button. A security feature, the salesman had touted, that allowed you to prevent theft. An extravagance, Jane had opined, that was a total waste of money. "Jane," she scowled. "This could be considered a precursor to kidnapping."

"I love you," she repeated. "You said I should take all the time I need before I come out. This is a part of why I don't - can't. Yet. And you said that was okay. I can't just stop being the girl who went to Sunday School, but I'm _trying_ to. I'm trying like you don't _know_ , Maur, to get through my crap because I want to be with you. Just you. Till we're old and grey, you. So I'm asking you, please, let me keep trying."

Quietness could mean so many things. Usually it meant Maura was thinking, analyzing a social situation to try to understand what was being communicated and what she felt about it. This wasn't one of those times. This time, it indicated anger. Not seething, roiling anger, but flat, untroubled anger, like those tar pits in California, deep and slow and with barely any noticeable activity, until some Stone Age or earlier fossil worked its way slowly up from the depths of the earth to the surface after epochs of being completely unknown and uncared about. But at least it was calm anger, and not explosive. "I love you too," she said softly, and one of those Stone Age bubbles popped open on the oily surface. "And I want you to keep trying. I will, too."

"But you think I'm a bad person," she said as another tear fell from her chin and darkened another spot on her blouse, "and I don't know how you could love that. And the trouble is, what you think is exactly what happened, so you _should_ think I'm a bad person for it. I did a bad thing. We... did something we both knew was wrong, and as much as... Never mind. We were entirely wrong, and we knew it at the time." Again, not a single excuse, rationale, or ameliorative statement could come forth. How could there be?

Jane dropped the keyfob in her lap and reached to take Maura's hand. "I can love you the same way you can love me when I make mistakes. If I can't love you when we screw up, we're not - Maura, maybe the _only_ good thing I'm ever going to get out of church is this. I can love you when you're not perfect, and when I'm not perfect, because we're trying to do right."

Both of Jane's hands were wrapped about Maura's, her eyes locked on the doctor's delicate fingers. "There's the other thing... I wanted to tell you. Before I saw you and Brophy," she spoke slowly, but without apparent rancor. "God, Maura, there's a _lot_ I want to tell you. About why I'm screwed up, about why I flipped out. I'm... I'm less mad about what you did than what Angela did." Angela. Not Ma. Jane used her mother's name.

Maura took a moment to consider those words, especially the use of Angela's given name rather than the title of biology and respect. Without looking at Jane, she cleared her throat, used a purse tissue to blow her nose, and pressed the button to activate her bluetooth hands-free phone. "Call Morgue." The number rang, then was picked up by the assistant on duty that day. "This is Dr. Isles. I need you to oversee reception of a body that will be coming in, a Brandon Thorne. I need to be elsewhere for a little while. Schedule the autopsy for first thing in the morning, please."

When the call disconnected, she started the car again, this time without being car-blocked by Jane and her keyfob. "We're going to get something to eat, and I don't care where we go, but we need to have more conversation than I have patience for sitting in my car today. Just tell me where you want to go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Reviews mean you get to hear the rest of Jane's apology.** _


	7. Oh, Danny Boy

The recent explosion of health freaks in Boston made it pretty easy for Jane to find an acceptable, quiet, restaurant where they could eat and be left alone. It was that or a TGIFriday's, and Maura had made her feelings about chain food rather well known. They sat in silence until the food came, and Jane knew it was on her to start the conversation.

So she told Maura about the fight with Angela, about the pamphlet, and what Jane had shouted at her own mother. "It's not that I'm ashamed, but you see why I can't tell her, right?" Sadly, Maura could understand that entirely, and would have said so, but Jane went on. "I mean, it's bad enough she thinks gay kids are going to hell, but me? You? She already lost Pop. I don't know what this'd do." Arguably, Angela had already lost Jane, but she hoped beyond measure that her mother would get a clue.

Jane stabbed at her late lunch. "Anyway, all that happened, and then I went downstairs 'cause I wanted you to talk me out of shooting her and..."

As Jane trailed off, Maura picked up the thread, "And then there I was with Daniel."

Jane nodded, not reacting to the name. "I overreacted. Blew it way out of proportion." She was still horrified at the idea of sleeping with a priest, but saying that right now felt like it might ignite their powder keg of emotions all over again. "I'm being inconsistent, too. How can I be mad about that, but not us? Y'know, it's... conflicting. And I feel like I'm making it way worse than it is."

"Actually, that makes sense to me," Maura admitted. "You and I aren't wrong. I know it hurts you because you think it means I don't respect other people's beliefs, but I can't make myself believe that the Catholic Church is right about this. We're not wrong. But Daniel... Father Brophy and I _were_ wrong. Not because I think priests should be celibate, but because _he_ made a vow and we broke that vow together. Danny - Daniel - damn it, _he and I_ were wrong. You and I are not, and I won't try to make myself feel that we are."

Resting her chin on one palm, Jane sighed. "You can say that, though. You're not Catholic. You don't have this whole other set of garbage tryin' to tell you ... Those kids," she grimaced and realized she'd not told Maura all aspects of the case, per usual, because her head had been up her ass. "They're gay," she said, taken momentarily aback by Maura's voice overlapping hers with the exact same words. "Um... Okay, jinx, you owe me a beer, and later I'll ask you how you know that. Anyhow, I think Father Metzov's talking them into killing themselves."

The boys' sexuality was not really news to Maura, but the current theory concerning Father Metzov was. Her eyes widened as their waiter filled water glasses and departed again. Once he was out of earshot, she asked, "Does he have a proven habit of this sort of thing? I met the man a few times and didn't care for him at all," nor had she cared for the fact that he had a pinched facial expression that indicated he'd probably heard, and put credence in, the rumors that she was trying to tempt Father Brophy to stray from his vows, "but are you sure? That's a very serious accusation."

Jane closed her eyes, deeply pained, and quoted from memory, "Sexual deviants have one place in the Catholic church, and that's in the priesthood, where they can be kept safe from their own carnal desires." She didn't, couldn't, open her eyes to look at Maura yet, but the intake of breath across the table told her enough. "He told _me_ that it was God's will, and what happened to us was God's work to make us better." Jane bit her lip and then opened her eyes, holding up her hands, "So I asked him why _God_ would do this, and he said it was my fault."

Horrified though she looked, and was, Maura felt bound to remind Jane, "That doesn't prove that he's convincing children to commit suicide. It only proves that he is... he is..." Her lips pursed; she could think of many, many words to call Father Paul Metzov, but somehow the non-vulgar ones did not carry nearly enough ire, and so she resorted to her secondary list. "He's an asshole. An asshole who makes himself the voice of authority and divinity, so he's a dangerous asshole, but it's not _proof._ "

Staring at the scars on her own hands, Jane nodded. "I know. We're working on it." She laughed suddenly, "I called Father Brophy last night, and he's helping us out. Offered to go spy on Metzov's youth group crap." Jane's hands twitched. She wanted, was starving, to touch Maura. _Screw it,_ she thought, and reached across the table to take the hand of the woman she was in love with. To her relief, her fingers met not the back of Maura's hand, but her open palm. Maura had turned it up to meet her halfway. "He's M- He's Angela's priest, y'know. He replaced this awesome guy, Father Petey. You would've loved him, he was like Colonel Potter with a flask of whiskey in his pocket." She smiled softly, remembering talks with Pit-Bull Petey. "I bet if he was here, he'd tell me stop being an idiot."

The smile faded when Jane's memories crossed into Petey's cancer and death. "Metzov replaced him, right after I graduated from the police academy and moved out. He's why I stopped going to church at all. When he told me that what Hoyt did to me was my fault, I started thinking maybe church was a bunch of bullshit I didn't need." Her voice got quieter. "I never told anyone why. They just thought it was Hoyt. I let them."

A little squeeze on her fingers gave her Maura's reassurance even before the honey-brunette spoke. "I don't like that he said that to you. He was wrong to say that, and I'm beginning to think he's not just rude, but a very disturbed individual. But I'm glad that he spoke harshly to you that way, instead of insinuating tiny little things that you might have accepted, little by little. I'm glad he drove you away from his own influence. If that's what he's like, then he's toxic, and you shouldn't be anywhere near him. No one should, in fact."

Maura took a moment to breathe and consider where to go next. There was so much they would need to talk through. Maybe it was a good time to talk about something easier. Well, not easier, but at least it was a change in subject. Sort of. "Father Brophy really offered to spy on a fellow priest?" Jane nodded; it actually made Maura smile a small, private, slightly grim smile. "Then Metzov must be worse than even you think he is. I can't imagine D... Father Brophy," _no reminders, no reminders, don't remind her,_ "doing that for anything or anyone unless he really felt that this was an incredibly important matter. If he's convinced, I'm convinced. Not that it would stand up in court, but that it's truly very likely to be Metzov who's instigated this series of deaths."

Nearly a minute passed in silence while Jane contemplated the depth of stock her girlfriend placed in the word and judgment of a fallen priest. Maura said nothing, not even a 'poor sweet baby,' because in her heart, she knew that sort of platitude was inappropriate. An unfamiliar emotion bubbled up in her heart. "No one should treat _anyone_ that way, cowering behind a veneer of cassocks and cruelty. I don't know much about your god, Jane," Maura said carefully, remembering the first time she'd spoken those words. "But as I understand it, the Church teaches the importance of forgiveness for those who can't quite live up to the impossible standard of perfection."

Jane gave her a curious look, one that implied there was much subconscious (or perhaps conscious) processing going on. _Mental note, Rizzoli,_ she told herself. _Ask about that later. Who learned the phrase from whom? Who? No, whom._ "I told Ma- I told Ma that," she admitted, and sighed scrubbing her eyes with the back of her free hand. "Are we going to be okay? Try to be okay? Together?"

"There's nothing I want more than that," Maura answered honestly, "but can we? Can you be okay with me? I'm not going to sugarcoat this, Jane. I sl..." she quieted as people were seated at a table near them. "I did what I did. I can't change it now, and if I'm honest," she paused. Jane knew she told the truth, always. She also knew now as well as Maura did that the truth wasn't always honesty. The pause was her way of reminding Jane of the difference. "If I'm honest, I wouldn't go back and change it now even if I could. That's my history, and for good or ill, everything I am now, everything I have now, including you, is because of _everything_ I've ever done. If there's a part of you that detests a part of me, that's going to be an issue for us over the long term. Can you truly find a way to accept this about me? That I'm a person who has it within me to have done this, and to have no regrets about it?"

The serious question deserved a serious, thoughtful answer, and Jane took a deep breath. "I can't promise I won't hate it sometimes," she said slowly, keeping a firm hold on Maura's hand, not letting her even think about pulling away. "And I can't promise I'm going to be okay with it. But... Everything I am now includes things I'm not proud of, Maura. _My_ history got us here too. All of it. And if changing any of that meant we wouldn't be here, together, then I don't want to think about it." She licked her lips and went on, "I really feel, I believe, I _can_ accept it, even if I'm not always rational about it."

They would probably have more fights about this, or other surprising revelations from either of them. That was part and parcel about hitching your life to someone else. You don't automatically know everything, you don't open a book half-way. They both had lives, and loves, before they'd met and after. They were different people. "You'd be smaller without those things in your past, Maura, and I," Jane laughed softly, "I think ... I wouldn't love you quite as much if you weren't all of who you are. The good, the bad, and the stuff that makes you say _Jane_ ," she smiled.

* * *

At Jane's behest, Maura dropped her off back at the station. No sooner had Maura arrived home than Jane texted her. _Can I come by after I'm done?_

Maura smiled and thumbed back as she pulled out food for Bass, _Of course._

Jane's reply was prompt. _It may be late._

Thinking about all the various implications in those four words, as well as their previous conversation, Maura carefully phrased her reply. _Jane._ Just one, simple word.

There was no reply for a few minutes, and then her phone beeped with a more lengthy missive than normal. _Sorry, I was laughing. I could hear your voice. I'm serious, Frost and I may be here late._

 _That's all right. Wake me up when you get here_ , replied Maura. She glanced at Angela's cottage, where the lights were still on.

This time, Jane did not argue. _K_ , she sent, effectively acquiescing to Maura in one letter, and there were no more texts.

As it was still early, Maura decided to make use of her solitude by going through her closets. It was just about time for her seasonal purge. She started by clearing some space, then began putting things into it that she was certain she wanted to keep. Uncertain items, she lay on the bench at the foot of the bed, tentatively pre-sorting into secondary piles for repair, give away, trash, and try on and decide later. Shoes, handbags, accessories, and seasonal outerwear would be similarly sorted.

Her hand paused as it touched a wash-and-wear fabric. For no aesthetic reason whatsoever, the inexpensive material made her smile. It was Jane's, one of a pair of work suits she had begun to leave here. "What do you think, Bass?" she asked absently, hearing the little scraping sound of shell against door frame. He had been moving sluggishly of late; it wouldn't be long before the African spurred tortoise settled into the habitat she had made for his seven or so yearly months of hibernation. "Should I move more off-season clothing into the guest room, so there's more space in here?"

The tortoise didn't say no.

As she sorted, only partially engaged in the more-or-less brainless task, Maura allowed the rest of mind to roam. The touch of a certain fabric, stitching distinctive at the brush of her fingertips, brought it abruptly back home, and she suddenly plucked the garment off its hanger, staring. How was this still here? She brought it up to her nostrils and inhaled deeply, and was rewarded - if that was really the right word for the sensation she felt - by a clear memory brought about by the scent still clinging to the wool, all this time later. Aftershave. His.

_Each of them lay still, having told the other that they were tired. Each of them had regulated their breathing to simulate sleep. He stared at the daylight seeping in through the window, as he had done all that Saturday morning; she kept the gaze of her reflection in the standing mirror near her closet door, on the opposite wall. Back to back, they kept their stillness, a scant inch separating their bodies from one another's warmth._

_Last night had been wonderful. So had the dawn. Now here it was - Maura's eyes flicked towards her alarm clock - nearly eleven o'clock, and the wonder had once again faded to worry, sadness, and guilt. This was why she usually left early in the morning. This was why they usually spent weeknights together, or Saturday nights, but never Fridays, when neither of them would have a reason to get up and go elsewhere at first light._

_The trouble was, she loved him. The trouble was, she knew he loved her. But contrary to what Lennon had sung in a song loved by her former governess, love was_ not _all you needed. She wanted constancy. She wanted openness. She wanted to hold his hand in some sunny location, kiss his cheek on the front doorstep. She wanted to feel that he was unreservedly glad to have her in his life. Their time together shouldn't be shrouded in the fear of public shame._

_Last month she had been late starting her menstrual cycle. She'd not mentioned it to him; how could she? His only choices would be to leave her to deal with a pregnancy and childbirth alone, or to hope that she would abort, yet another thing that would be contrary to all he believed. He was a Father, but could not be a father._

_The test was negative, and she could share her relief with no one._

_Her tears soaked the pillow, but Maura remained silent so as not to disturb him. She knew he wasn't asleep, but if she made a noise, he would have to admit it and turn over to ask what was wrong._

_Nothing was wrong. That was the problem. They were perfect together. Almost._

_A little jerk of the mattress told her that he had lain still for too long and gotten a leg cramp. As he tried to quiet his cry of surprise at the pain and straighten his leg to work the excess lactic acid buildup from his muscle, she surreptitiously wiped her eyes, then rolled over, sat up, and began massaging it without a word. "Sorry," he apologized, smiling weakly. She gave him the same smile back. "Don't worry about waking me up. Move around more when you're resting, Danny Boy," she said with an attempt at quiet coquettishness, using the pet name she'd often found amusing. "Cramps aren't fun, and neither is deep vein thrombosis."_

_Once his calf felt better, she decided not to resist the impulse to massage the rest of him. Weeks before, he had preached about Martha washing Jesus's feet with her hair. Maura wouldn't interpret it literally, but she did have an odd reaction to - the word made her smile despite her mood - ministering to her lover's body._

_As she finished, Daniel sighed in gratitude and apology. "I have to go."_

_"You don't," replied Maura. "Yesterday you mentioned clearing your schedule. It's okay to say that you want to go, Danny."_

_Though he did let himself sweep a grey-blue glance over her nakedness, they both understood that it was the least of the reasons he came here. "I don't want to go," he said in the same intonation he used while blessing the Eucharist, the tone she'd heard about every other week for over a year now. "I never do." Daniel leaned forward just long enough to embrace Maura, pulling her back down with him as he resumed his comfortable lying position._

_Over the months of their liaison, he had become steadily more and more at ease with life outside the cerebral and spiritual realm. He no longer blushed to disrobe, though he still looked amazed every time Maura did. He no longer seemed chilled when naked; he moved with confidence, an acceptance of his maleness that he had lacked before. He had become accomplished at kissing, at touching her, at being open about his reaction to her touches._

_Daniel was now a lover. A man, in all senses now. There was a part of him that seemed to recognize his own growth and not feel mortification, that seemed almost proud. The rest of him seemed to want to silence that part of him, to feel a good deal more shame than he did actually feel._ I did this to him, _Maura thought, and felt her culpability grow leaden within her._

_"I should go."_

_"You should."_

_They had the conversation fairly regularly. Neither of them wanted to do it, but couldn't stop themselves from bringing up the reminders that they were wrong, all wrong in this. This time, Maura knew, it had to be the last time._

_"Daniel," she began, lifting up onto one elbow. Though her leg was still thrown across his thighs, she managed not to draw attention to the fact. "Is there any... any way that we can have one another in a better way?" She would not directly ask him to leave the priesthood for her sake. The choice had to be his, and asking him would automatically place pressure on him that she didn't want to place._

_"Marriage was permitted in the early Church," he said, surprising her. She'd known this, but most priests were scrupulous not to disclose the information to outsiders - outside the holy orders, not just non-Catholics - lest they become confused as to the exact nature of the "perfect, unchanging, everlasting" laws of God and Church. "In the Eastern church, it is still possible."_

_Hope flared. "Have you considered...?" Maura asked, her voice grown tentative against her wishes._

_"No," Daniel answered, softly but with determination, and the hope flickered, smoldered, and died. "Not seriously. It would be the best solution, if only I didn't believe as a_ Catholic _believes. But I do."_

_Hazel eyes closed. She inhaled. Exhaled. Inhaled again. "Then there isn't a way for us to be together openly," she concluded. "This is what we have, for as long as you can stand it."_

_"Hey, I more than stand it," Daniel said, and this time when he sat up, he remained upright. "I love this. This isn't something I have to endure, Maura. This sustains me." One hand, warm from having been resting on her waist a moment before, stroked down the side of Maura's face. "This is what helps me endure everything else."_

_"Me too," Maura said with a tiny, fond smile. "But it's not enough for either of us, is it? If it were, we wouldn't have to hide it from your congregation or anyone else. And I wouldn't have to rationalize the fact that I've been eroding your faith."_

_Daniel looked shocked. "You don't!" he protested with quiet vehemence, but Maura was already shaking her head._

_"You have beliefs, Daniel, and even though I don't share them, I respect the fact that you have them. So much." She sat up too, cross-legged rather than intertwining their bodies the way they usually sat once they'd given in to their desires and wound up in bed again. "But every time we're together, we're doing something that's contrary to those beliefs. When you teach one thing and do another, you tacitly turn yourself into a hypocrite. I know that's not the real you, Danny. You're better than that. You're better than this. And I should be, too. I always thought I was."_

_Daniel was quiet for a long time, then stood. Maura couldn't help but notice the way the sparse light filtered through her bedroom curtains and fell onto his pale, perfect body, the body that never saw sunshine, seldom received touch. The body she would never see again, she knew. "I'm going to shower," he said, "and then it's your turn, and I'll still be here when you get out and get dressed. If we have to talk like this, I don't think I can..." He would not look at her, and could not complete the sentence._

_Not that he had to. She knew what he wasn't saying. She felt the same way. They could never look directly at one another's intimate skin and still make a clean break._

_Maura showered in the guest bathroom instead of waiting her turn. The floral scent of the guest shower gel - there was an evergreen-scented one for male guests, and fortunately she also kept one in her own room, or Daniel would have often gone to church smelling of her - washed away the last trace of maleness and sex from her body, though it couldn't do a thing to remove the sensory memory of his hands and body moving against hers. For once, she finished before he did; perhaps he was having the same difficulty she was._

_He did not emerge from the bathroom until she had selected an outfit, laid it on the bed which she'd already made while waiting for him, and had donned her underthings, stockings, and slip. The sound of his footsteps made her turn, and the sight of her fluffy white towel wrapped around his waist and hips weakened her resolve._

_Her phone rang before she could change her mind, before he could say anything that would make not changing it easier. "Isles." There was a body, said the voice of the dispatcher. "I can be there in an hour. Text me the address, please; I don't have a pen and paper handy right now." Dispatch rang off, whereupon Maura turned back to Daniel. "I have to go," she said, this time with a touch of irony. That was his line, not hers._

_She helped him dress for the last time, fastened his trousers and belt, tied his shoes, buttoned his long, dress-like clerical waistcoat, tucked the white collar around his neck. He lowered her black dress over her arms and head, tugged it into place, zipped up the back, zipped the impossible, ridiculous, impractical boots onto her calves. Patted them, then stood._

_Their kiss was thorough, languorous, both arousing and setting them to rest. It was final. "I love you," they promised simultaneously, causing them both to smile sadly. It wasn't enough._

_An hour later, Maura set her best friend's dislocated nose, suggested they do something together outside a crime scene, and refused to call a reddish brown stain blood. Charles Hoyt, through the man they would later come to know as his apprentice, was back._

Maura sighed as she put down the black velvet dress in the pile she would later box up for charity. It had been Daniel's favorite, and had no place in her closet anymore. Besides, with the clothing that she hoped to shortly be adding to her closet, there would be no room for it at all.

* * *

By the time Jane arrived, hours later, Maura had fallen into a comfortable, meditative, doze in bed. The sound of Jane's shower pulled her to the surface, and she was awake enough to admire the naked detective as Jane exited the bathroom. This time, the person who had used her soap, her towels, would not say she had to go for any reason other than work.

 _That is mine_ , thought Maura smugly. Every time she watched Jane, she got a little thrill. "Hi," she smiled, stretching across the bed to reach for Jane. Possibly oblivious to the effect she had on Maura, Jane lent over and kissed her gently, their fingers winding together.

"Sorry I woke you up," whispered Jane, backing away and reaching for her nightstand.

Maura sighed, emphasizing her frustration. "Don't be." She did not let go of Jane's hand and pulled her back down. "Come here." Jane started to protest, pointing out the late hour, but with very little pressure from Maura, she again acquiesced. There may have been a teasing 'Dr. Bossypants' comment, but that didn't last long.

There was no need to feign sleep, or enforce distance, afterwards. Jane slept easily, one hand possessively draped over the sheets that covered Maura's stomach, the other laying openly between them. When they'd first shared a bed platonically, and many times after, Jane had hidden her hands from view. Even after they'd begun a romantic liaison, it had been months before Jane's body relaxed enough for her hands to not creep back up under a pillow.

With the comfort of Jane's body, her even breathing, and the sybaritic exhaustion that came only from love, Maura fell into a sleep that was all encompassing and relaxing. Deep, devoid of painful dreams, and it concluded with a grumpy woman asking her to hit snooze on the alarm clock, before peppering her neck with morning kisses.

As they got up, they said very little, choosing to instead enjoy each other's company in silence. Jane read the sports page while Maura did the crossword puzzle over eggs, toast and coffee. When Maura got up to refill their coffee, Jane had taken her crossword puzzle and filled in some of the answers. They ended up sitting snuggled up together, finishing it as a team before Jane left to take care of Joe.

* * *

Jane spun her pen between her fingers thoughtfully, waiting for Father Brophy to show up. She hadn't particularly wanted to talk to him, not now that her day was going that much better than the last two, but work was work. The pen slipped out of her hand and Jane caught it while it was still in the air.

"What's got you so nervous?" asked Korsak. "It's not like Brophy's all that weird. I mean, he's a little bit weird weird. No one in their right mind gives up women."

This time, Jane did not catch her pen. How was this new information going to color her ability to work with the man? Would it be possible to look at him and not think of the knowledge they shared? "I didn't sleep enough," muttered Jane. Completely accurately, though for reasons she did not regret. She took the newspaper off Korsak's desk and started to fill in Vince's crossword puzzle, easier than the one she and Maura had done that morning.

When had her life become one of secrets? Suddenly Jane understood why Maura wanted to live everything openly. Even if you ignored the fact that she couldn't lie, they were living a series of lies by omission to everyone around them. _Korsak, I'm sleeping with Maura,_ she thought, and the words died in her mouth. _I'm in love with her, and I can't imagine spending my life without her. But Ma's gone batshit about praying away gay, and I think if I tell her, she'll have a heart attack, or at least blame me for it._

The pen tapped on the paper. _Spahn,_ she wrote, for 22-down. Winnigest southpaw. Something Maura would memorize, protest that 'winningest' was not a real word, but never know the way Jane did. Then again, Jane had no idea why 'orts' was an acceptable answer for 'Food for fido,' so they were even in a lot of ways. Maura knew answers to questions like "Leaflet-base appendage" (stipel) and Jane commented once, before they'd started dating, that they balanced each other out.

The warm smile Maura had graced her with had been Jane's undoing, and the start of a number of thoughts that ended with her announcing to Maura that it was worth the risk. Months later, of course, and not before a series of horrible mistakes, like Dean. _Vomit. How could I be so stupid?_ Jane sighed and put the pen down, refusing to permit herself a trip down the rest of that memory lane.

"Hey! That was my crossword!" yelped Korsak, snatching the paper back. "You did it in pen!" Jane rolled her eyes and stood up to get more coffee, but was distracted by Maura coming in. "She stole my crossword," Korsak informed Maura, indignantly.

"Did she get any of the answers wrong?" Maura wondered distractedly as she poured herself a cup of cop swill from the nearby machine, the one that had been in constant, unwashed usage since the Regan administration.

Korsak protested, "That's not the point. She took my paper and did my puzzle."

Catching herself just before salting her coffee, Maura permitted herself a little smile, then let a little of it slip Jane's way; Jane winked back, once she'd ascertained that no one was looking at her. She was surrounded by straight men, so of course they were looking at Maura. They'd all but forgotten that Jane was a woman, too, thanks to constant exposure to her. Familiarity had not bred contempt, but it had certainly inured them to her appearance. "And you're telling _me,_ why? I'm not the boss of Jane."

"Since when?" asked Frost, his dark eyes glinting with humor. Jane shot him a glare, and he looked for an escape, "Hey! Father Brophy!"

Oh, this was about to be very weird. "Awkward tortoise," she muttered to Maura, taking the official results from her hand. It wasn't that they didn't get emailed the results, but the physical handing over of the file made the truths that much more real. And for Maura, it was an excuse to come visit.

The priest wore his clerical street clothes, simple black pants and shirt, with his white collar. In his arms were a box of donuts, a carafe of decent coffee, and a stack of papers. "Beware priests bearing gifts," he said, dryly, as Frost and Korsak took the items. "Though I wish I came with better news."

Jane took the papers, adding them to her own growing pile, and hesitated. Normally Maura would take her chair or desk in these moments, but Jane didn't know if the doctor was going to stay. In her pause, Korsak pulled a chair from Crowe's empty desk for the priest, placing it near his own, and then filled paper cups with decent coffee for everyone.

"Anything's better'n nothing," Korsak promised.

Maura nearly sat at the edge of Jane's desk. She normally would have done so, keeping her head at roughly the same level as the detectives', but it also enabled a slightly enhanced view of her. It would be inappropriate, not to mention highly uncomfortable for both Jane and Daniel - _Father Brophy,_ she reminded herself sternly - to give the man an upskirt view. The pathologist sat in her girlfriend's chair instead, knees tucked discreetly beneath the desk instead of out and facing the others, though she let her torso turn to keep her involved in the conversation.

"What news, Father?" she asked, not only because she was curious, but to hide the evidence of her weariness. The sexual reunion she had shared with Jane had put her heart (not to mention her body) somewhat at ease, but it had taken time and energy, and frankly, both of them were physically drained. Satisfied, sated, happy, fulfilled, but in need of naps.

Relieved, Jane took Maura's crap coffee and replaced it with the more modern brew brought by the priest. "I had dinner with Metzov," Brophy began. Already his day had been epically worse than Jane's. "He _is_ looking for help with his youth ... project." The man's hesitation hung in the air, uncomfortably. "But that's not as interesting as the papers."

Jane picked them off her desk and flipped them open. "Metzov's from Vermont?"

"Metzov was recalled from Vermont," Brophy replied, carefully. He took the time to pick a plain, unglazed, donut, and dip it in his coffee before eating. "He was prominent in the anti-homosexual movement. In and of itself, that might not be cause for removal," he continued, "except that he was a part of a more radical movement. Third page."

Obligingly Jane flipped to that page and had to put her coffee cup down. Showing the paper to Maura, she then handed it to Korsak. The fact that someone could have a more disgusting version of the flyer Angela had posted was not news to Jane. That someone had used the church to raise money to protest the shift in Vermont from civil unions to gay marriage. The verbiage was incitement to riot. "They didn't defrock him?"

Brophy shook his head.

"They transferred him to _Boston_?" asked Korsak, suddenly barking out with laughter. "Whoever's in charge of that is a sneaky bastard, excuse me Father, with a twisted sense of humor. I like the guy."

The sense of humor in Brophy's eyes made Jane like him. Damn it, why couldn't he just be a jerk so she could comfortably hate him, like Ian and Garrett. And Ucky Slucky. _Ew ew ew!_ But Brophy smiled and said, "I'd find it funny if I didn't have to work with him. He won't let me help out in this group, though. He says I'm not a manly enough influence on the boys." Maura, sipping her coffee to give her an excuse not to look directly at him, coughed.

"Wrong pipe," she rasped, clearing her throat as she motioned for the priest to continue. Jane sat down on the corner of her own desk, pinching her lips together and looking away from the little group. Damn it, that was funny. Or it would be, if... No, it _was_ funny. Maybe it wouldn't have been funny yesterday, maybe it wouldn't be funny tomorrow, but just right now - with the hickeys barely hidden by her own tall shirt collar and Maura's by that pretty little scarf - it was almost hilarious. She opened her eyes, glanced back, and found Brophy looking a bit less likely to run screaming if she spoke above a murmur as he went on.

"Apparently, Father Metzov is aware," he was explaining, "that I volunteer at Dignity/Boston. It's a Catholic church geared specifically towards LGBT believers. He said some... unflattering things relating to my protective attitude towards that community." The insinuation absent from his words was very much present in his voice: Metzov thought he, Father Brophy, had been diddling the kids.

Quickly, Maura pointed out, "There were no definitive signs of sexual abuse on the boys. Only one of their bodies bore evidence of penetration, and I can conclusively state that it was consensual. There's a test I performed that... Never mind," she broke off as all the other eyes fixed her with the _no details, for the love of god_ expression. "It was consensual." There was a moment of awkwardness as everyone processed that. No boyfriends had turned up in the course of their investigation.

"But it's gotta be him, right?" asked Frost, looking somewhat relieved at that news, as did they all. "I mean, it's only boys, and they were all in the youth group. I just wish we could get in there..."

Jane snorted, "I'd send you in if you were Catholic." They all paused to think about how Metzov would deal with that. "I appreciate the effort, Father," she sighed, and finally picked out donuts for herself and Maura.

"Not the powdered," Maura told her, and was delighted when Jane handed over a cream filled long john. As she lifted it to her lips, she was oblivious to the fact that three detectives and a priest had ceased to converse and were looking her way. Her delicate bite and subsequent lip-licking caused four people to shift in their seats or change their stances just subtly.

"Uh, Maur," Jane said very quietly. When she had some, but not all, of Maura's attention, she mimed putting down the pastry. Maura shook her head, affronted that someone would try to take away her sweet, fattening food, but couldn't speak her protestations as her mouth was full. Jane repeated the motion, mouthing _put it down_. Maura chewed, swallowed, and defiantly took another bite, just to show she wasn't going to do everything she was told.

Jane's pained expression - echoed, Maura now saw, by Brophy, Frost, and a highly embarrassed Korsak - was what finally clued Maura in. Hurriedly she handed Jane the sweet treat and wiped her fingers on the napkin handed to her by Frost, who apparently was Johnny on the spot with such things. "Sorry," the petite woman murmured, notably, to Father Brophy.

For once, Jane understood why. Everyone else could easily assume Jane wouldn't be moved at all. They also all understood that Frost and Korsak wouldn't have a problem: if they did, they could take care of it. Father Brophy was still male, and thus _could_ (in their minds, theoretically) respond, but was bound by oath to do nothing about it. He'd just have to put up with feeling fairly terrible until it passed. Jane nodded tacit approval and moved on.

"Yeah." Jane said, moving the donut to the other end of the desk. "Well. We don't have an in, and that means it's back to my gumshoe thing. Frost, you up for a trip to church?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Reviews give you more scenes with pastries.** _


	8. The Cold Hard Truth

Angela was just wiping down the counter, the last step in her work day before she could finally lock the doors to the cafe and call it quits, when the bell tinkled, heralding a customer. "Sorry, I'm just about to close," she said, then turned around, expecting to find a cop about to argue the hard-and-fast policy that would enable the cafe attendants to get out at a reasonable hour. Instead, she saw Maura Isles. "Oh."

"We fought," Maura said evenly, "but as Jane tells me, one fight doesn't ruin a friendship unless we want the friendship to be ruined. Do you want that?"

Clenching the rag in her hand Angela said nothing at first. She looked away from the well dressed doctor and went back to wiping an already clean counter. "If you're just gonna yell at me like Janie, I'd rather not," she finally said, her voice tight and angry.

"I really dislike yelling," Maura replied sincerely, "and I don't think it would serve you well, any more than it would serve me. I think there's another way to address this. Will you come and let me show you something?"

The rag twisted again. "You're not gonna take me to some PFLAG meeting, are you? Frankie said I should do that." She scowled, "You're all gay advocates now." The rag was thrown, angrily, onto the counter. "I just don't understand any of this," lamented the mother of three strange children.

The surprise at mention of Frankie's suggestion was quickly tamped down, but Maura decided that later she would talk to the middle Rizzoli child. Rather than respond to everything Angela had said or asked, she chose just one, and held out her hand. "I know," she said with genuine sympathy, "and I want to make it easier. I'll never try to change your mind or your beliefs. I promise. I will _only_ show you why Jane, and Frankie, and I feel as we do. And then, if that needs to be the end of it, it can be. Okay?" More surprises: Angela did not take her hand, but did follow her, pausing only to lock up the cafe on her way out.

* * *

"Where are we going?" Angela asked as the elevator dinged down several floors. "I thought we were leaving."

Maura pitched her voice for maximum reassurance. "Just downstairs. I promise, there's no PFLAG meeting or intervention in my office."

"Your office? With the dead people in it?" Suspicion and revulsion fought for first place in her pulled-back shoulders and facial grimace.

 _Like mother, like daughter,_ Maura thought with some amusement, which fortunately she kept off her face. This was not a time for humor. "Yes. It's very important, Angela. I'm doing this for the sake of our friendship, but even more than that, I want to help you and Jane to repair this schism in your relationship. I don't like hearing her call you by your name. I want to hear her call you Ma again, and I know you do too. Please?" The doors dinged and opened, and Maura gestured for Angela to go first.

Wariness scarcely abated, Angela did.

* * *

The drawers clicked open. Metal slid against metal as the drawers inside were pulled all the way out, ending their tract with a soft clang: four bodies, each covered with a sheet. "This is the case that Jane and I have been working on for the last several days. There are actually five bodies, but the first one has already been released to his next of kin." Her fingers flirted with the edge of the sheet. "The first... It's probably best that you can't see him. He leaped in front of an MTA train. His body was mangled beyond recognition; even the dental records were inconclusive. We had to check DNA for confirmation, and were only able contact the boy's relatives because he had been witnessed and recognized by his summer school classmates just before he jumped."

"Boy?" Angela asked, horrified, and grasping at any question that would enable her to lengthen the time before Maura pulled back the sheet on the body over which she now stood.

"His name was Jacob Graff. He was seventeen years old. About to start his last year in high school." Maura spoke the facts plainly, not wanting to insert her own emotions or biases into Angela's awareness yet. "Due to the security video from the MTA, we know that he wasn't pushed. This was a suicide."

The name pushed the air out of Angela's lungs and she wheezed. "Jake Graff?" The name came out as a squeak while recognition of the name, and connecting it to the recent services at her own church rang in her skull. "Why would he do that?" she groaned. "How could he do that to his family?"

Without a word about the reasons, Maura closed the file and opened another. "This second victim was hanged," she said, presenting Angela with the picture of the young man. "He was eighteen. He'd graduated high school and was about to start university in the fall, but he took summer courses to get himself a little more prepared for it." Without warning, she pulled the sheet back. The body was nearly white.

Angela gasped, but without mercy, Maura continued. "Robert Auson didn't go out much into the sun. He was apparently too busy studying to enjoy his last summer of being alive. Do you see the marks here, and here? They show the exact size and thickness of the belt he used to suspend himself from his ceiling beams. You see these white dots amid the purple and red? Those were the holes for the belt buckle to go through. I'm told that Robby was an Eagle Scout, collected spoons from everywhere he traveled, and was very active in church." As if it was just occurring to her, Maura noted, "Actually, I believe you might know him. He went to St. Gabriel's Our Lady of Sorrows. That's your church, isn't it?"

As her eyes went from the doughy face to the neck and back to the face, Angela turned pale and stepped back. "Why? Why are you showing me these boys?" she asked, horrified, but like people at a traffic accident, unable to stop looking. "These are _boys_ , they're babies." Angela grabbed the collar of her own shirt, as if that could, somehow, protect her, shield her from the dead children.

Again there was no answer. Maura simply stepped around that drawer, still open, leaving the sheet off, and approached the second drawer, their third victim. "James Smith was sixteen years old," she recited, "when he took two handsful of his grandfather's heart pills. Apparently he'd been saving them up for quite some time, taking just one pill from the bottle each week, so his grandfather would still have all he needed and not run out prematurely. When his little sister found him, his head was tied in a plastic bag, which was filled with his vomit."

Tears started to course down Angela's face. She made no attempt to stop them. "But why- why would these boys kill themselves?" she pleaded with Maura, the source of this pain and horror. Angela closed her eyes tightly for a moment. "I don't want to see any more."

"I know," Maura replied, "but this can't be over." Though gentle, she was also firm about this. "I know you're horrified. I also know you love your daughter. For Jane, Angela." She took hold of the older woman's shoulders and steered her towards the drawer holding the fourth victim. The sheet came away. "This is Chris Anderson. He also took pills. They were his mother's; she's dying of cancer from a malignant mesothelioma, caused by asbestos she inhaled while tearing down old buildings. Can you imagine what pain a boy must be in, to steal the medications of a dying woman whom he loves as only a child can love his mother?"

She let that rest until just before Angela was able to inhale enough to try to speak, then hit the next blow. "The only thing I find more interesting than that, in this particular case, is that both Chris Anderson and James Smith ground up their pills before ingesting them. That makes the medication hit the bloodstream faster, virtually guaranteeing death will be too swift for anyone to come in, discover them, and interrupt the process. These boys weren't crying out for help, Angela. They were _serious_ about wanting to die. It also means that they knew exactly how to make that happen, which is not common knowledge among teenage boys."

The tears flowed freely. "All four... five... Why? Why would anyone do this? But these boys. They're babies, they're children. Don't they know how much this must hurt their parents?" She inhaled, sniffling wetly. "I couldn't imagine... If this was Frankie or Tommy, I would never..." Angela turned away, looking at the door as if plotting a teary escape. "Why?" she wailed, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

"I'll tell you," Maura replied, "and I've decided you don't have to view the last body." Angela looked so relieved that for a moment, she felt guilty to be doing this to her. However, she would not, could not stop here. "Go sit in my office, and I'll let you see something else. Go on; I'll just tuck these young men away."

Obscenely, it sounded as though she were going to turn on night lights and give them milk, cookies, and bedtime stories. Angela held a hand over her mouth, sickened at the thought that no one could do that for them now. She glanced back at Maura, but took refuge in the offered office, making use of a near-empty tissue box to blow her nose and dry her face.

Sitting alone in Maura's strange office was harder than sitting in her living room, something Angela did often enough. She had managed to collect enough of herself so she wasn't a wreck when Maura came back in. "I used up your last Kleenex," Angela apologized, holding up the empty box.

Without a word, Maura crossed behind her desk and pulled out a fresh box, handing it over before she opened her laptop and queued up the video of Brandon's suicide. "Keep that," she instructed gently, with a pat on Angela's shoulders, then went to close the door before hitting Play. While Angela watched on the couch, Maura sat beside her, watching Angela's face.

At first, Angela was confused, but she held the box mutely. When the video started, she was surprised, looking at Maura before the words "Gay Straight Alliance" were said. Then her eyes widened and she stared. When he talked about wanting to want to like girls, she cringed. Then, when he spoke of his prayers, Angela looked ashamed, as if now, finally, she felt the turmoil. Every time the poor, sweet little boy said he was gay, Angela flinched. The tears began early on the video. "Did he...?" was all she was able to ask. She had seen the gun. She knew, but still Angela had to ask.

"Did he commit suicide?" Maura asked rhetorically. "Yes. That was the last body, the one I didn't show you. The back of his head was blown completely away." She took the laptop and closed it, setting it aside. She took a moment to contemplate her next move. "There's one other body," she said after a long moment. "There's a body of a young girl. But she didn't come across my table. Would you let me tell you about her?" she asked, finally lifting her eyes to Angela's. They scalded with their intensity. This one... this one was important. To her.

Angela clearly wanted to say no. It was painted all over her face, in the haggard expression. She shook her head in no discernible direction. Up, down, left, right. She didn't voice her feelings. Her lips moved, phrasing no words in English, or Italian, that Maura was familiar with, until finally coming up with one simple, small, word. "Yeah."

Maura nodded and, after a moment to recall the details, began. "The girl... She kept a diary, which is why it's so easy to know her thoughts. Anyone could have known, if they'd bothered to read those little pink books with their locks not even turned closed. Or if they'd asked her what her thoughts were. She had a crush on another little girl in kindergarten, and always wanted to hold her hand or kiss her cheek, because her cheeks looked soft. If you read the words she left behind, that girl seemed to fall in love at the drop of a hat. Every other month, it seemed, there was someone new. It didn't take much to know why, either. She had such a huge capacity for loving. But every time she expressed it, Angela, that little girl's advances were rebuffed. Sometimes because her _objet d'amour_ just thought it was silly, or didn't understand. That was usually the case, when she was younger. But the older she got, the more her friends started reacting with shock and disgust instead of giggles or confusion. Those diaries... they hardly ever mention parents, teachers, other relatives, school, adventures. They're almost nothing but a long, long list of other little girls who couldn't love her back."

Maura fidgeted a little, wiped her hands on her skirts, stood and walked away to gaze outside her office window, onto the wall of doors, each of which hid a body, or would within the next few days and weeks. As she walked away, Angela's flow of tears lessened, and she began to give the graceful doctor a more careful look. A mother, Angela was used to listening for the meanings under the words. "Reading that child's words, Angela, you'd have to come to the same conclusion that anyone else would, if they bothered to read. That every little girl is capable of loving, and of being hurt by love. The only thing that changes with age is the level of risk we're still willing to take in order to find out if we can be loved in return." She crossed her arms, holding them over her body.

"Those diaries span the ages of four to twenty," Maura recalled, eyes unfocused - or, rather, focused on what was not before her. "Sometimes, that girl talks about loving her girl friends, and sometimes boys, but she talks about them in the same ways. Wanting to be near them, hold their hands, find out more about them. Wanting to do or be anything in order to just be loved back. Reading those books, seeing them change from pink to plaid to classy black or brown leather, I was struck with how easy it seemed, through that girl's eyes, for other people to just like, while she loved so hard, so fiercely. She was so passionate, and it didn't seem like she had anyone around her that could even hold that much intensity of their own, let alone bear the full range of hers, too. She got used to playing small so other people wouldn't be frightened of her."

"Around the age of sixteen," Maura went on relentlessly, her voice grown expressionless and dull, bland, "she started to find that she was physically attractive to others. She liked the... entertainments afforded by her body and the bodies of others. Mostly boys; they were more receptive to her rather awkward flirtations. But girls too. In fact, she talks over and over about how boys are so much fun, because they're willing to throw themselves into making out, when girls just wanted to be friends. Sometimes kissing friends, but mostly just friends. And then she talks about fear. All along, mind you, she talks about _other people's_ fears."

Shining, glassy hazel finally returned from the wall of drawers outside and back to rest on Angela. There was no judgment in Angela's eyes now, but the light of recognition was dawning. The girl's identity was suspected, if not known, and Angela warily watched Maura's motions.

"Because she wasn't religious, this girl didn't have a way to really understand why there were some people, mostly girls, who thought she was evil, or sick, or gross." Maura paused, and Angela knew she was having her own words handed back to her - not thrown, but handed, almost as nicely as if it were a wrapped gift. "But she knew that they felt that way, and that they were the vast majority of the girls she knew. And their parents. She knew the reasons some of her friends weren't allowed to be around her anymore. And it gradually became apparent to that girl that the majority of the world would think the same way. That she was disgusting, and bad, and not worthy of being loved."

Maura took a deep breath. "The girl saw her choices very clearly. She could choose to ignore well more than half of her own nature. Because, you see, she could sexually enjoy either male or female lovers, but she always thought that she was capable of _loving,_ of being in a relationship if someone came along who was able to withstand her love; and that person was much more likely to be a woman. But she could ignore that, push it down, and either remain single, or just succumb to what everyone else wanted her to do. Get married to a man, have children, be perfectly in tune with society. Or she could flaunt society's rules and be happy, but always ostracized for it."

The slight intake of breath was Angela's only comment. Her body was stiff and still, but her eyes never left Maura. She didn't even color or flinch when Maura spoke, baldly, of the historical facts.

"Or," Maura paused, turning away again from Angela's wide eyes and gazing out the other window, onto the bank of computer screens and scientific equipment that filled the evidence processing laboratory, "she could opt out of it all, altogether. She could concoct a chemical brew of drain cleaner, bleach, toilet bowl cleaner, and every other toxic chemical in the house, of which there were quite a few, and swallow it, and never have to worry again about whether a friend's parent said she wasn't allowed to come over, or a friend herself would look at her with loathing and fear when all she wanted was to share a sleeping bag and be held all night at a sleepover."

"And she did it, Angela. She mixed together all those chemicals. And then, do you know what she did?"

Having sat stock still for so long, Angela took a moment to manage a raspy reply. "What did she do?" Her voice carried equal parts fear and hope.

"She poured it out," Maura said. "At the age of twenty, just after having broken up with the man who wanted to marry her, she said _to hell with this; I'm going to live._ " Then she turned around and fixed her eyes once again on Angela's face. "And she did live. And now her life has meaning and purpose, because she can give other people answers about why their loved ones died."

Angela's body twitched, as if she fought the urge to get up and wrap her arms around Maura, like she would have for her own children. Instead, it was Angela who finally looked away, breathing deeply, loudly, through her nose. The woman's mannerisms were so similar to Jane's, Maura had no problem understanding the depth of conflict Angela was fighting in this moment. Agony at a truth she did not like, but also at the fact that she caused pain like that to others.

Finally she stood up, turning away from Maura. "I don't... I _do_ understand why you told me this," she said softly. "I'm not ready to..." For a change, it was the outspoken Rizzoli who was at a loss for words. "I need to think about this," Angela managed, and walked out the door quietly.

* * *

The room was quiet, with only the lights from the street below giving a golden glow to the bedroom. Jane Rizzoli was as still as possible, without risking a leg cramp or other twitches that might wake up the honey-brunette beauty using her for a body pillow. Maura's breathing was deep and even, clearly sound asleep, drained from the drama of the past few days (and the make-up sex the night before). There had been no surprise to Jane when her offer of just sleeping was met with relief.

While an argument of this level with her own mother was not unheard of (one day, Jane would have to tell Maura about that one right after Hoyt where she'd called Angela a shrew; to this day, Angela blamed it on the painkillers), the brutal self-confession Maura had delivered was soul-wrenching. After swallowing the urge to drive upstate and kick Garrett until he was crapping his own teeth, Jane consoled her girlfriend, pointing out that Angela having to think about it was progress, and assuring her that Jane wasn't mad at what she'd done. "You're stronger than I am," Jane promised.

There were a lot of different types of comfort in life, and as she gently stroked Maura's hair, she felt that this was perhaps the best. How else could she give and receive this soothing warmth? _This is what love is,_ Jane told herself, feeling the bedclothes rustle as Joe jumped in and found a place amongst their legs.

So many times before, they had slept in this bed, or Maura's guest bed, without touching. Just friends, they had moved from two women who knew each other into Jane sleeping in fear in Maura's guest room that one, horrible day. Without having anyone else to whom she could say how terrified she was, Jane would have been a mess. In that moment, when Maura slipped into bed with her, and she flippantly asked if Maura was hitting on her, their friendship moved into something more.

_It wasn't the first time they'd lain in a bed together, a gulf between them. Jane had no idea how many nights had ended with Maura lying beside her, though she was certain Maura could recite the number if she'd asked. Right now, all Jane knew was the terror of the day, the horror at killing Hoyt, was flashing before her every time she closed her eyes._

_"Jane, you should sleep," murmured Maura, her own voice blurry._

_"I know," she sighed and rolled onto her side, away from Maura, eyes wide open. She couldn't sleep. It was impossible. Behind her, she heard Maura's exhale of annoyance, and then a soft hand on her back._

_The shakes came back with a vengeance and Jane's body was wracked with physical and mental misery. "Oh, Jane." Maura's voice was a cool breeze on a hot day, and her arm wrapped around Jane's waist, just holding her close, and Jane's hands spasmed, grabbing Maura's with surprising ferocity. Stay, the hand pleaded, and Maura stayed._

_Neither woman spoke again that night, neither cried. They hardly slept. They shivered until the fingers of dawn crept into the room, warming it and easing their hearts. Then, finally, exhausted, Jane concentrated on Maura's heartbeat until her eyes drifted closed, and she dreamed of only warm, soft things._

_That was the turning point. Even though there were men (stupid, stupid, men), Jane wanted to spend all her time with Maura. And it seemed to her that Maura wanted the same thing. After all, she liked Tommy, but she loved Jane. Torn between fear and loss, Jane held herself back, starving herself emotionally. What if this shattered their friendship and Jane never again got to watch that smiling face in rapture over a cheeseburger and beer, or spitting out 18th century beer, or sticking her tongue out while doing yoga positions Jane couldn't hope for?_

_When she teased Korsak about yoga meaning it was serious, she caught Maura's eye._ Yes, I mean us, _she shouted in her mind, wishing desperately for the genius to develop telepathic powers. When she wore her best bra and panty set for Maura, but professed wanting to wear the plain white for Casey, she hoped Maura caught the clue. Instead, it was months, more agonizing months, until finally she took that chance. Months that included a number of colossal mistakes that threatened to destroy their friendship irreparably._

_A fall day, almost a year ago, listening to Angela prattle on about Christmas plans, and caroling, before it was even Thanksgiving, Jane and her brothers had begun the traditional teasing of their mother. "Halloween's just over, Ma," Tommy groaned._

_Frankie jumped in, "Yeah, remember you promised no more Santa planning until the last of the turkey's gone!"_

_"Which is about ten minutes after I serve it with you three around!" shouted Angela._

_The loud Rizzoli family merrily argued around Maura's table, and Jane noticed the woman smiling with a smothered longing. She wasn't technically family, and apparently she was feeling that. "You better get a bigger bird," grinned Jane, looking at Maura. "This one eats half my burger if I let her!"_

_Blushing, Maura tried to protest that she was sharing, but the Rizzoli boys happily included her in on their teasing, just like if she was Jane. Now Maura was being harassed for poor eating choices by Angela, and applauded for devouring an entire steer burger by the boys. After the boys left for their apartments, Angela for her guest house and Jane was cleaning up, Maura kissed her cheek. "Thank you."_

_"What for?" asked Jane, surprised and suddenly as nervous as when she was twelve and had kissed Emily similarly._

_"You don't have to pretend I'm family."_

_"You_ are _my family," Jane protested. "I can't think of anyone else I'd want." The words had double meaning, and perhaps Maura caught that, because she hesitated._

_As one, Jane and Maura spoke. "I was thinking-"_

_They stopped and both made 'you first' motions. Again, simultaneously, they said, "Sorry, you go first-" Jane smirked and Maura giggled. "No, you."_

_"This is ridiculous," laughed Jane, louder than Maura and thus winning brief control over the conversation. "I'm trying to ask you out!"_

_Maura looked puzzled, then hopeful, and then concerned. "Out?" There were volumes of meaning behind that one word, something Maura was very good at doing. For someone who thought brevity was unnecessary, Maura could summarize everything into one simple word._

_Jane swallowed and nodded. "Out. Like I want to come by with flowers, pick you up, take you out to dinner, maybe a show, and then come back here and kiss you goodnight." She tossed the words out a little faster than intended, but Jane was pleased to find she wasn't blushing. "A date."_

_More pleasing was Maura's reaction. Her eyes smiled before her lips did, and when those wonderful, expressive lips curved upwards in a slight, demure, smile, Jane's heart melted. "A date," she repeated. When Jane nodded, Maura pressed her lips together, biting back the smile. "Will you wear a dress?"_

_"If you want me to."_

_"I want you to enjoy yourself."_

_"If you're there, I will."_

_Maura couldn't hide the smile anymore and flushed. "Pick me up at 7," she agreed. "In a button-down shirt."_

_And that was it. It wasn't a blown out drama, or a comedy of errors. It was simply two best friends becoming more than just friends. Maura probably would make snippy commentary about how Jane left out the best parts. Still, at its heart, this was an easy thing to do, an easy love to share. Very little changed outwardly, especially as far as the rest of the world knew. But inwardly, Jane felt the raw parts of her heart healing. Trust was easier again, jokes came more fluidly._

"You're not asleep," Maura complained, her voice barely audible. "What're you thinking?"

Jane kissed Maura's forehead. "Thinkin' about you," she said, honestly.

"Sleep." And the doctor's breathing deepened, sliding back into the comfort of slumber. With a smile, Jane closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against Maura's forehead. Just as Maura fell into deep sleep again, she muttered, "Shoes."

"Took 'em off," promised Jane. But she waited until she was sure Maura was fully asleep before very carefully kicking her sneakers off and falling asleep herself.

* * *

Jane pulled into an empty spot in the church parking lot, but made no motion to get out of the car right away. Beside her, Frost kept still, giving her a look out of the corner of her eye.

"Korsak told me," he said, apparently feeling a need to fill the void of conversation.

"Good." Jane didn't look at her partner. The silence stretched on. "You know, that's the sort of crap people tell you feels better if more people know about it."

To his credit, Frost snorted. "Doesn't work, does it?" The younger man looked like he had something more to say, but an old church lady started waving at them. "You ready?"

"No," laughed Jane, and she got out of the car. "I haven't been here in years." She clapped his shoulder. "Let's divide and conquer. Little old ladies love you, go talk to them. They'll just want to know why I'm not married, so I'll take the young moms."

When they rejoined one another in the entryway, two hours later, Frost looked a little disturbed. Jane asked, via an arched eyebrow, what was going on with him. "You know, I was raised Christian, too. Not Catholic. Mixed. My mom's family is Pentecostal and my dad's is Missionary Baptist. But they're pretty close together, all told. Basically, same thing, different building." As he often did, Barry paused, glancing at Jane, and worked his lips as if chewing around some words that he was fairly certain would not be well received. At last he came out with something he thought wouldn't be problematic. "It's interesting to get new perspectives and angles on a religion that I was pretty sure I shared, before I came in here."

It took Jane a moment to parse that statement and its undertone. Barry was clever but years with Maura had taught her to read through the babble. She leaned in, lowered her chin, quieted her voice, and tightened her jaw so no one could read her lips. "You're trying to say _these white people are crazy,_ aren't you?" she deadpanned.

Frost looked half ashamed and half relieved. "No," he replied in the same tone, "I am trying _not_ to say these white people are crazy."

Jane held her dead-serious look for about two more seconds before snorking laughter up her nose. "You know, they really are," she agreed, pained at holding in the worst set of church giggles she'd had since seeing a big spider crawling around on the hairspray-helmeted head of one of the little old ladies she didn't like, two pews ahead. Barry joined her.

To their credit, though neither could control the giggling fit, they waited to burst into full-on laughter until after they were in the car with both doors shut. "We're horrible people," wheezed Frost, coughing as he got his breathing under control.

"The worst," she agreed, and wiped the tears of laughter off her face. "Did you get anything useful out of them?"

Frost shook his head, "Just that, shocker, suicide's a sin." Distaste was plainly written across his face. "One of them said so was being gay, though."

Eyebrows up, Jane blinked. "You didn't mention that, did you?"

"No, they did. Apparently Brandon Thorne's homosexuality was an open secret."

Wasn't that interesting. "Angela didn't know," muttered Jane, and ignored Frost's confused expression at her using her mother's name. "Little old ladies know everything... What was the feeling about that?"

Pulling out his notes, Frost flipped pages. "Pretty split. Some of those old ladies are really okay with the gay thing. Or at least they'd rather the kid be gay than dead." He paused and quoted, "Gay's a sin you can absolve. Dead is dead."

The car felt a little colder and Jane hunched her shoulders. The sudden rapping of knuckles on the window made her, and Frost, jump. "Jesus," she growled and rolled down the window to the smiling face of Father Paul Metzov.

If Colonel Sanders had a slimy younger brother, with a smile that never reached his eyes, and teeth that were just too white, Metzov would be a front-runner to play the part in the Lifetime Movie of the Week. "I haven't seen you at church recently, Jane," he smarmed at her.

Jane gritted her teeth. "I've been busy, Paul."

The priest's faux-smile dropped. "That's Father Metzov," he corrected, touching his collar.

In return, Jane held up her badge. " _Detective_ Rizzoli." It was an old-fashioned gunslinger standoff, Jane could hear the wild west music in her head, whistling those familiar tones from 'The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly' with Clint Eastwood. "I've been busy, you know. Helping people." She heavily implied that her help was better than Metzov's, and this was not missed by Frost, who inhaled beside her, all but saying _Giiiiirl._

Metzov pursed his lips. Funny how when Maura did it, Jane found the action adorable. When the jerkface did it, she wanted to pistol whip him. "Well, that seems a suitable penance."

Her hand clenched around the badge and Jane swallowed the rage. "Brandon Thorne was in your youth group," she pointed out. "They must be having a tough time, dealing with the loss of a friend."

"They can pray for his soul," intoned the priest, virtuously. "Sin is sin, however, as you may have forgotten. My boys know that the right life is the only life for a Catholic."

Breakfast turned in Jane's stomach, acid churning. "Funny," she replied. "I thought you were supposed to be big on forgiveness. Especially for those of us who can't manage perfection."

Metzov scowled, as if the words were familiar but he couldn't _quite_ place them. "I'll pray for you, and your case. Detective." The word was said with the same intonation as 'little lady.' There was no respect in his voice for Jane, her badge, or her job. "For both of you," added Metzov, finally speaking in Frost's general direction.

The priest walked off and Jane shuddered. "That dude is one creepy-ass priest," muttered Frost.

"You don't have to tell me, Barry."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews get Metzov nailed to the wall.


	9. Somebody's Babies

The knock at her door, bright and early, was a welcome present on a crisp, end of summer day. The smirking woman held out a hand, and together they set off into the angled glow of dawning. Underfoot, mile after glorious mile was eaten without word or pause for thought. They kept pace, the taller woman loping along the smaller athlete's more practiced stride, through the neighborhood, around the edges of suburbia, and back down the road to the house. The last quarter mile was a near sprint, with long legs outpacing better toned ones. At least for a little while.

"I win!" shouted Maura, delighted, as she slapped the front door first.

Jane nearly ran into her, pinning her against the door. "Are you sure?" she joked, leaning in for a sweaty kiss.

Maura squirmed away. "Ew! You're all gross and sweaty," she complained, and let them in the house.

Behind her, Jane muttered "That's what she said." A joke Maura still didn't really get yet. "Go shower. And I'll make breakfast."

"Go shower?" Maura repeated. "Not, come shower? We can share, you know. I've got more than enough room in the master bath. And it's nicer," she added with a sly smile as she strolled towards her room, peeling off her running shirt as she walked.

Jane snatched the shirt as it fell, "Oh, no. We're not going to be hours late for work. _Again._ Dispatch is still teasing me about that," she faux-complained, shucking her Boston PD shirt as she followed Maura to the master bedroom.

Making a face, Maura agreed, "Oh, fine," sounding as petulant as she looked. "I'll shower, then you can shower while I'm drying my hair, okay?" Since Jane seldom bothered to dry hers, it would save them time. Agreement made, she hopped on in, leaving Jane to undress at a more leisurely pace, turn on the radio, and lay out the clothes she wanted to wear.

"So we can't shower without a little hanky panky?" asked Jane, raising her voice up over the noise of the water. "A little slap and tickle? A little ..." Jane stuck her head in the bathroom and lowered her voice in a terrible approximation of 'sexy' that wasn't at all. "A little hide the sausage, if you know what I mean?"

"Sausage?" Maura laughed in spite of herself, gazing out through the steam-coated shower door to see if Jane was, as she often did, making weird faces or miming improbable actions to go along with her comical suggestions. Which of course she was. "Of course we can, if you want to get in here and try." Already she was making free with the shampoo, and had a big sudsy monument on her head.

Barely a moment later, Jane was in the shower, cheerfully scrubbing Maura's back. "This is one of my favorite perks," she admitted. Even with the co-showering, Jane was done and back out first, sticking around only long enough to express admiration for Maura's form in a rather chaste manner.

Wet hair wrapped in her own monument, this one of towel, a partly clothed Jane bounded into the kitchen where her energy expressed itself in a peculiar rendition of 'All The Single Ladies' while she chopped fruit for a pair of smoothies. After all, if you can't bounce around in your girlfriend's place in your panties and an undershirt, where can you?

As it turned out, however, one's girlfriend's house was not always the best place for partially-clothed dancing. What Jane failed to notice as she did her recognizable Single Ladies dance, was the sound of the ultra-quiet laundry dryer starting up, followed by her own mother's head leaning out from the open laundry room door. Curiosity drew Angela to check what the movement was that she'd caught out of the corner of her eye; appalled fascination kept her attention.

Normally, Angela would have spoken, but they'd had such a horrible fight lately that she didn't feel like engaging, so she just stood there staring at her eldest doing a dance that, properly speaking, belonged to more bootylicious bodies, not to Jane's willowy shape. One brow lifted, however, as she noted that even without any booty to speak of, Jane wasn't half bad at it. Apparently she hadn't entirely wasted four years worth of dance lesson money.

"Oh oh oh, oh oh ooooooh," sang Jane, waving one hand and strutting across the floor to the refrigerator. As she closed the door, holding the soy milk, she pirouetted and didn't notice her mother. "All the single ladies, all the single ladies. Hey, Maura! You want peanut butter?"

"We're out," Maura called back, just before starting up her hair dryer. "Just use a couple of scoops of soy protein."

Angela remained in the laundry room, folding the load she'd removed from the dryer, left there the previous night. Despite the issue she was having with her daughter, watching Jane do the Beyoncé dance was amusing enough to make her smile. At heart, Angela Rizzoli was basically a jovial person.

Her daughter, given all the fits and starts of horrors life had thrown at her, remained a fairly grumpy version of a jovial person. Seeing her free and happy was something Angela didn't often witness. "All the protein powder, all the protein powder," sang Jane, shaking her booty back and forth as she carefully measured out two scoops. "Maybe cocoa powder, no, not with protein powder. Oh oh oh, oh oh oooooooh. If you liked it then you shoulda put banana in it. If you liked it then you shoulda put the berries in it." Each ingredient involved further butchering of the song, until the lighter toned laughter of the house's owner filled the room.

"Jane, what are you doing?" asked Maura, a broad grin on her face as she bounced in, half dressed, hair dried but not styled yet, and honestly, more than a little frizzy. Fortunately she was at least wearing her dress, a pretty orange silky affair that made her look a bit like a California poppy. No jewelry, and her feet were bare, and she hadn't yet done her eyes.

Maura looked slightly disappointed for all of two seconds, then pointed out, "The dance goes like _this._ " Further hijinks ensued; the smoothie ingredients just sat there in the blender, waiting to be pulverized. "Okay, now do it with me. Now put your hands up! Up in the club, we just broke up, I'm doin' my own little thing..."

It was a Beyoncé Knowles dance riot.

After the song was worked to death, Jane slapped Maura's tush and actually blended their breakfast, splitting it into two tall glasses. "I wish this wasn't going to be the only bright spot of my day," Jane complained sitting at the breakfast table. "I gotta meet with the DA's office this afternoon."

Maura frowned, "Not dressed in what you picked out, I hope."

Jane rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to court, Maura! Just sitting down to go over the case. If we can't get a warrant, we're done."

"Unfortunately, I can't get you anything that will help with that," Maura apologized ruefully as she stripped two straws, handed Jane one, and plunked the other down into her glass of pale purple slurry. "This is one of the few times when the crime isn't physical, so the forensic evidence won't help you with your conviction. It's just a shame there aren't any living witnesses. Or are there? Do you think maybe Father Metzov said anything in a group setting that included anyone besides our victims?"

Grimacing, Jane sucked at her smoothie. "Frost and I spent the last two days poking around, trying to get someone to talk to us about it. I think the kids kept this close to the chest. The best I got was one of the grandmothers telling me that it was okay if I never got married." She poked at her drink morosely. "Course it was Nonna Gilberti, Giovanni's nonna, so her opinion is probably a little skewed right now, depending what he told her."

As she and Maura shared a warm smile at the inside joke, Angela paused in her laundry folding. The course of the conversation had become interesting; she leaned towards the door, hoping to 'accidentally' overhear more.

"I wonder," Maura was saying, "whether you could... Well, no, probably not. You've already thought of that, no doubt." Off Jane's look, she explained, "Undercover. I can't think of anyone that Metzov doesn't already know who'd be both willing and able to do it. I don't know, maybe there's a really young-looking officer who could pose as an altar boy or something?"

Jane made a thoughtful smile, "Korsak's going through all the new graduates, but finding one who could pass for a Catholic altar boy means we have to actually find one, and one who doesn't know any of the churches around here." She slurped her drink. "Not a lot of guys put that on their resume for being a cop. Korsak said it's the whole man thing. All dicky of them." Jane reached over and looked at Maura's crossword puzzle. "Maybe I could get Tommy to go in on it, though," she said pensively.

The connection was missed by Maura. "He doesn't look _that_ young, Jane."

"Oh, no, sorry, Tommy was an altar boy!" Jane laughed a little. "Ma said it'd give him character and teach him responsibility. He got kicked out for stealing the sacramental wine."

Maura shook her head. "He's essentially a good person. I really believe that, but it's hard to ignore the lack of foresight he shows, isn't it?"

Ducking her head, Jane started on the crossword. Classic avoidance. "Tommy had all the same chances and direction me and Frankie had." A pause. "Frankie and I had. He made his own choices. Same as I did."

"Unfortunately," pointed out Maura, "that leaves us without a way to visit Metzov's responsibility on him. I hate thinking that he'll just keep on telling young boys that their lives aren't worth living, or whatever horrible nonsense he's giving them, and nothing will ever happen to stop him from continuing to spread all that bile."

Jane stopped and dropped the pen to stare at her hands. "That's the worst part of that jerkface, y'know? He has a point! I mean, I _know_ I screwed up, that I shouldn't've run in there alone after Hoyt. And Korsak knows he screwed up, making me think he didn't have my back. But that doesn't mean any of us _deserved_ what happened."

Angela inhaled sharply and her hands flew to her mouth. Father Metzov said _what_ to her baby girl?

"Jane," Maura soothed, taking her lover's hands in her own. "You already know you didn't deserve what happened to you. Someday, you will have heard me say often enough for you to believe it when I tell you that you aren't at fault. You didn't make Hoyt hurt you. He would have found a way to do it, no matter what. You went in there because you knew that if you didn't, the girl he had kidnapped would suffer just like all his other victims did. You couldn't know she was just bait for you. As wrong as the police handbook says it was, what you did was the right thing. Books don't know everything."

For a brief while, there was nothing for Angela to hear. No words were spoken. When she finally got the courage to peek around the corner and see what was happening, Jane was wiping her eyes and picking the pen back up. "Maura, how can your brain remember nothing of sports?"

"Priorities," Maura shorthanded. It had taken her years to learn to do that, rather than give the detailed answer that would have satisfied both a psychologist and a neurologist. "If you'll recall, I have no trouble remembering things about your beloved Red Sox, if I've read the statistics in question."

Snorting, Jane wrote down _Perfect Pitch_ , "It's a pun, Maura. And that makes the across ... um ... Don't tell me!" Jane peered at Maura, who had her lips tightly pressed together. "God, you're killing me. Okay, what's 10-across?"

"Petruchio," Maura replied without looking away from her smoothie, the last of which she was just sipping away. She stopped, like a champ, just short of that annoying last-slurp noise. "Which makes 13-down _umbra._ Take your time with the rest. I still need to fix my hair and makeup. It shouldn't take me long. Oh, and would you feed Bass?"

Jane stuck her tongue out at Maura, "Abandon me and your turtle, fine."

"Tortoise, Jane!" the voice floated back from the master bedroom.

Jane smirked. Sometimes it was just too easy. "Go do your girlie things. Yell at me if when it's seven, will you? I'd like the new ADA not to sneer at me for being late. Again." She shook her head, "You arrest one ADA and now they all think you're out to get them. Honestly."

Half an hour later, the girls left for work, freeing Angela to come out of hiding and do the same. After one important errand.

* * *

"So what'd he say?" asked Korsak as Jane walked back into the bullpen.

"Apparently using an ex-con as a spy on a church is frowned upon in this establishment." Jane threw her coat in the chair, "And don't ask what the DAs office said."

Korsak winced, "That bad?" Jane just grimaced and dropped into her chair, slouching with her entire body, arms hanging limply down the sides. "So that's it. We toss it into unsolved and pray there aren't any more?"

"There will be," Jane pointed out, dully, trying not to wince at Korsak's use of 'pray.' "The rest of the kids in the group are probably straight, but the next time a bunch of gay kids falls under his umbrella? God, it'll happen all over again, and we don't have anything." She was too tired to rage and toss stuff off her desk, but the feeling was still there. "We lose. The end."

"Not necessarily," came a familiar voice from the doorway, and there stood Father Brophy, holding the door open for Angela Rizzoli. It was he who had spoken.

Korsak smiled, both at the priest and Angela, a fact Jane did not miss. "Father, Angela. Is something... wrong?" The detective sergeant looked from his partner to her mother and back again. Even he couldn't have missed Jane's avoidance of the cafe for the last few days.

Jane sat up, watching her mother and the priest, but saying nothing.

Angela, too, remained self-contained, casting glances at Jane that spoke of reluctance, hesitation, and at least a passing desire to hang onto whatever hurts they'd inflicted on one another over the week. Father Brophy, however, felt no such compunction. "Yes, something is wrong. Children are dying." It was unnecessary, yet it did serve to focus them all on something more important than the little tiff between a mother and daughter. "But I think... _we_ think there's something that can be done about it. Angela, would you like to share your thoughts?"

Angela Rizzoli had a great many things she could have said, and many of those were things she would like to have said. However, for once, she recognized that her daughter's workplace was probably not the best setting for all of those conversations. Instead she went right for the gold. "I've been a member at St. Gabe's for thirty-seven years. I've known Father Metzov ever since he got there nearly seven years ago. He knows me."

Angela took a deep breath, sending a surreptitious glance towards Jane as she told everyone but Jane, "I went to church today. I had some stuff to pray about." Jane restrained almost all of the outward signs of cringing. "Father Metzov was there. I told him that one of... I told him someone I know came out to me. As a homosexual. Or bisexual, or something, I'm not really sure. Anyway, he said my friend was evil." A hardened look came across her features. "He tried to back up a little bit and say they should just try to control themselves, but the more he talked, the more I thought about those poor boys. They must've been so scared to come talk to him. What if he told them the same thing? Teenagers have it bad enough without coming down that hard on them. What if they went to him for help, and that was the help they got? And I just got so sick to my stomach."

"You understand," Angela turned to Vince, pleading for the empathy she'd lost the right to ask from her daughter. "And so I thought, this can't be right. This can't be what God wants. Sin is sin, I know, but so is telling people they've got no place in the world. Not just people. Kids. I can't just go to his church, knowing he's telling somebody's babies to off themselves. But I can go there to be undercover. I want to wear a wire. Let me do this. Let me help you nail the bastard."

In a disturbing way, Jane felt like she was having the conversation with her mother, explaining what a badge bunny was. "An... Ma," she said carefully, using her favored maternal term for a reason. "Ma, do you understand what we're trying to do?" She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "We want someone to go in, spend time with this guy, and wait for him to give himself away. You'd be unarmed, you don't have on-site backup. If he finds out, all this could still be inadmissible. And..." Jane looked at her mother seriously. "Ma, you don't come out of these things thinking the same way."

To lose faith in the church herself was one thing. To ask her mother to even consider it was another. No matter how wrong Jane felt Metzov and the church were, she'd never wanted to rob that comfort from her own mother. Jane looked at Brophy, beseechingly.

Angela's expression faltered, and she glanced quickly around for support from Korsak, Brophy, even Frost. Someone to bolster her against the objections of her own daughter. "Janie, it's children. Those boys were somebody's babies. Metzov took away five mothers' sons. And he didn't even kill them clean. He took away their hope and made them do it themselves. He has to be stopped, or some other mother will feel like those mothers feel, without their babies." She'd had a taste of that herself since Jane had all but disowned her. It was sour as piss in her throat, that feeling. "I need to help you get him."

The gentle soul that was Vince Korsak put his meaty paw on Angela's shoulder. "I'll go ask Cavanaugh," he said softly. "You can sit in my chair, Angela." The shoulder was squeezed and Vince walked down to the lieutenant's office.

Perhaps fearing for his life, Frost made an excuse of having to drop off something, and vanished, leaving their section of the bullpen empty, save for the two Rizzoli women and the priest. The amount of awkward in the room was palpable. "May as well grab a chair, Father," sighed Jane, waving at Frost's vacated seat.

Brophy took the chair, and assumed a similar post to Jane's, while Angela crossed her legs at the ankles and tucked her feet back out of the way. No one looked at each other. "Ma, you don't have to do this because of what we fought about." She glanced at Brophy, pretty sure he held more cards than Angela thought.

"Yeah, I do," Angela spoke up, voice even more hoarse than usual. "But not because we fought. Because you were right. I thought we were helping those poor kids, but we weren't. We were just trying to put more pressure on them, and they had more than they could stand already. I have to fix this. Part of the solution, Janie. I can't be where I was, and I can't sit on the sidelines."

Father Brophy patted Angela's arm as he explained to Jane, "We've spoken about this all morning, Detective Rizzoli. She knows it will be difficult, frightening, and potentially dangerous, in the event that Father Metzov becomes uncontrolled. She wants to do this as her," the word penance hung in the air, but he did not pluck it out and use it, "particular mission in this field."

Oh, Jane knew all about personal missions, self sacrifice, and not sitting on the sidelines. But for the first time, she had to think about someone else, someone not ready for any of this, trying to help. Frankie understood what he was getting into, as much as any rookie. "You know," she said slowly. "I think I get why my job scares the hell out of you, Ma." Jane pressed two fingers to her forehead, as if the incipient headache could somehow be prevented that way.

Angela pointed out, "We'll be a little closer to even, then. Now, come on, what other choices do you have? I'm perfect for this. He already knows me. I'm on his action committee, for Pete's sake! I put his flyers up all over the place! He'll trust me. And what's your alternative, Janie? Let a bunch more kids think that everything bad in their lives is their own fault? Let a whole new crop of boys come in to replace the ones that are already dead, and then join them? I'll tell you something - he hand-picks them. He chooses the boys that he thinks are in need of _guidance_. Told me so himself. You know what that means."

And they did. They all saw, in their minds, a never-ending chain of young, confused boys and men, offered help but given guilt and robbed of hope, until they self-destructed: all led by their twisted, priestly Pied Piper.

Jane closed her eyes for a short moment, trying to push the image to the side for now. "You're going to have to keep doing that, Ma. If you do this, you have to keep on the action committee, keep taking the flyers. You can burn most of them, but you're going to have to put some up. You're going to have to live a lie for a long as it takes, or as long as you can." The irony of what she was asking her mother to do was not lost on Jane, and she shot Brophy a look. He knew it too, damn it.

To keep a second, secret life from the people you respect, to hide your real feelings every day. _This is killing Maura,_ she thought and had to look away. After all this was over, she had to tell her mother. Jane couldn't let Maura live in secrecy, for the second time, forever. It was hard enough for Jane, and she was perfectly able to lie. But sweet, brilliant, goofy Maura? She deserved better.

"I get it," Angela was saying. "I can do it, Janie. I could do just about anything you could name, if it'll mean keeping Father Metzov from making any more children..."

They were saved further elaboration by Korsak returning and asking Angela to come talk to the lieutenant. As her mother left, Jane couldn't look at Brophy. "She tell you everything?" she asked, eyes locked on the bobble head dog in a Red Sox uniform on Korsak's desk.

Brophy took a moment to consider. Angela had not asked him to be her confessor. Therefore, though he would not discuss the substance of what she had said, he had a certain leeway about the fact that they had spoken at all about anything that would concern Detective Rizzoli. "Angela told me the things that have been troubling her lately."

The sharp exhale through her nose was less than a snort. "Maura told me her side." That was probably as far as either of them wanted to go on that one. "We talked, me and Maura. It's ... it's ..." It wasn't fixed, it wasn't fine, but it was getting there. "We'll be okay, I think. I just have to figure out how to tell Ma."

The priest went white, then red. It took him a long time to resume normal coloring, bless his Irish heart. "I don't... I don't know that you want to know anything from me at all, but for what it's worth, no one entered into that situation without a lot of soul-searching, and that's how it ended, too."

Now it was Jane's turn to change colors. No, she did _not_ want to know about that. "That... I meant Maura told me about her and _Ma_ , in the morgue! Not... Not that." She covered her face with a hand, and then the damned church giggles struck. "Oh, God, Brophy, you can't even ask what you did to deserve all this." Jane managed to look at him, but the smirk was plastered all over her face.

Again he colored, but this time with a wry smile. "Since the first day I met... that person, I've never asked why I deserve any misfortune the Lord chooses to send my way. All I know is that if they're the price, then I got a bargain." He chuckled, then grew serious. "You know, Jane," Brophy began, then glanced around to make sure that no one was within eavesdropping range. Just to be certain, his voice dropped in volume. "A priest is considered to be married to the Church. I married my job, and because of that, I couldn't... make any other commitments. Conflicted though it may have been, and still is, my heart is taken. Don't make the same mistake. Don't marry the job."

Jane's face flushed, and she too looked around. No one tried to eavesdrop on a priest talking to ... anyone. She didn't trust her voice and nodded at him once. Now all there was, was to wait and see if they were going to put her mother into danger.

* * *

When Angela saw Jane that morning, her daughter had her hair in something Frost joking called a ponytail of justice. The headset, however, reminded Angela of that silly movie Janie had watched a million times. "You look like that Princess Laura," she'd told Jane. "The one from _The Star Wars._ " And the men in the surveillance van broke into silent laughter.

"Just be safe, Ma," sighed Jane.

Being called Ma again was a relief. Even a few days of 'Angela' felt horrible. She straightened her blouse, the one Maura had picked out, and cleared her throat. Both Janie and Korsak had taken Angela aside to explain that she had to play it like she wasn't wearing a wire. Don't talk into the wire, don't shove your boobs at the man (Janie pointed out he was a priest and that would look weird anyway). "Just be normal, Angela," Korsak had pleaded. "Don't be anything but yourself."

"Vince is a sweet man," Angela told Janie, while her daughter fixed the wire to her bra.

"I'm not having this conversation while my mother's standing around with her shirt off," snarled Janie, though Maura found it delightful and beamed at Angela.

Feeling just as unarmed and unprepared on the fourth day of her spying adventure as she had on the first, Angela carried the tray of coffee into the church offices. The best she could say was that the wire stopped itching. "Morning, Father," Angela greeted, hoping she didn't sound _too_ chipper.

Metzov was standing by the door to his office, talking to a young boy dressed in altar boy attire. "Now, remember what I said." His smile never reached his eyes as Metzov clapped the boy on the shoulder and chivvied him off. The boy was barely into his teens, if that, and his face still bore the chubby roundness of his youth. He tried to look bravely at Angela as he hurried past her. "Ah, excellent. I trust that's my half-caff, skinny venti latte with the dark-chocolate biscotti?"

It had taken all of Angela's strength to recite that order. She'd tipped the barrista extra, from her own pocket, afterwards, as an apology. "Of course." Privately, Angela smirked. Half-caff, her ass. Maura had told her someone was more likely to say what they were thinking when agitated, so she'd ordered regular, fully-caffeinated coffee. Any unfortunate damage to Metzov's blood pressure and subsequent danger to his heart was... well, satisfying, but not the point.

Handing the priest his coffee and the baggie with his biscotti, Angela put the tray on the secretary's desk. "Where's Suzy? I brought her that decaffeinated tea she said was helping."

Suzy the Secretary was nine months pregnant, and due any day. The last week had been filled with 'all day morning-sickness,' and Angela had taken to giving her home remedies. The tea with ginger and honey (a suggestion from Maura) was working best. "She went into labor last night. Or so she thought." Somehow, Metzov managed to sound displeased at the idea of birth. Janie was right, he was a total jerkface. "I suppose I'll have to answer my own phone today."

 _Like that was hard work,_ thought Angela. "I could maybe help out, Father? I got today off from the cafe." Officially all she was supposed to do for Metzov was deliver the mail from the PO Box, drop off some papers at another church, and, out of the goodness of her heart, pick up the coffee.

Metzov's eyebrows lifted in contemplation. "Yes. Yes, I think that would be nice." He sipped his coffee and winced, "They never put enough sugar..." Instead of going into his office, he rooted through the baggie until he found four packets of sugar, adding them to his 'skinny' latte. Defeating the point, wasn't that?

"Everything all right with ... That was Ernesto wasn't it?" asked Angela, sliding into the secretary's chair. Suzy would probably complain if she readjusted it, so Angela left the confusing levers alone.

"Yes, he's having a crisis of faith," explained Metzov as he stirred his coffee. "Of course I can't tell you details."

"Oh, of course, of course." Angela agreed, quickly.

Meztov nodded, and sipped the coffee again. "Ah, better. Please remember, I like it sweet."

 _Vomit,_ thought Angela, but she nodded back. "Sweet. Real sugar, not the other stuff."

"Precisely," beamed Metzov. His smile made her skin crawl. Self-centered bigot. "Artificial sweetener causes cancers, after all. And how is your own crisis?" he asked, as if an afterthought.

At least Angela didn't have to fake her turmoil there. With a momentary pang for her Janie, who was listening, she sighed. "To be honest, Father, I'm struggling. I know what the church says, I know what you told me. But when I think about children... Isn't it our responsibility to guide them? Not just force these hard choices on them?"

"Children?" Metzov said, sharply looking up from his pretentious coffee. "I thought you said this was a friend of yours. Is this a friend of one of your children? Maybe a grandchild?"

Angela cringed inwardly, and in her mind she could see Jane with her "Princess Laura" headphones on, making the same expression. "No, Father. She's a grown woman. I just... you know, she's somebody's little girl, and I care about her, and I want to help her. Can't you give me any advice that she'll maybe take?"

Metzov sat back, looking satisfied. "If I were you, I'd tell your daughter -"

"Daughter?" Angela looked, and sounded, shocked. "What's Janie got to do with this? I'm talking about my friend!"

Metzov didn't look convinced, but continued on. "Very well, Angela, I would tell your _friend_ ," he paused significantly, "that the Church is always here for her. I'd be happy to counsel her myself. In fact, I consider it a large part of my ministry, helping young people - and adults - to make spiritually smarter choices than that."

As Angela trained her facial expression in the ways of neutrality, he relaxed a little, sipping his extra-sweet "skinny" drink between one phrase and the next. "You see, Holy Mother Church is adamant in its doctrine. The laws of the Church, as first articulated by Saint Paul, after whom I am named," he attempted and failed to sound modest, "and who is considered the first Pope, state unequivocally that homosexual relations are sinful in the eyes of God, just as they are repugnant in the eyes of right-thinking man. I use man, of course, in the sense of all humanity, not only the male of the species."

 _Vomit._ Angela was half a breath from saying it out loud. Instead she said, "But knowing something's a sin is different from not having the urge to do it at all, right? I mean, people know lying or cheating or adultery or murder are sins, but they still do that. What makes this sin worse than the others?"

"Because it is a negation," Metzov said, and his fingers began to rub together with the hand not holding his disposable cup, a manifestation of irritation, "of the very fabric of nature! Taking one life is a sin, but it's only one life. Homosexual relations are like spittle in the face of the Almighty, who has ordained that all species interact," he paused to sip his coffee, but this time it did not calm him. Metzov was getting worked up. "- As I was saying, that all species interact in the normal, natural, God-created way of heterosexuality. Furthermore, they result in women who don't fulfill their holy purpose of creating life, and men who subjugate one another as _women!_ "

* * *

Out in the surveillance van, there was a sharp intake of breath. "Tell me we can arrest his ass for that alone," Korsak fumed. "You think he's got any idea the contempt that shows for women?"

"Not yet." Surprisingly, it was Frost who spoke. "We need him to say a lot more than that. Thinking like that isn't actionable. It's just a sign that he's a total-"

"Guys! Focus!"

* * *

Aghast, Angela could do or say nothing for a long moment. Fury warred with the need for reticence and maintaining her cover. Finally she could stand it no longer, however. "Father, did you tell that to those boys who died?"

"Of course I did!" Metzov said unthinkingly. He was on a roll, and not stopping for anyone. "The only place for a sexual deviant is the priesthood, where he can be watched carefully by his brothers in the holy orders. God desires obedience to his natural laws - but if a person cannot submit, he should at least not live among others whom he'll poison with his perversions." Metzov set down his mostly full coffee cup, the better to articulate his points by gesturing. "The Lord abhors an unrepentant sinner. It would be better to commit one sin and end all other sins than to perpetually live in a state of disgrace before mankind and especially before God."

Angela picked up the cup to put it on the tray she had brought in, but as he went on, forgot to set it down. It was just too horrifying. "These people," Metzov was saying, little flecks of moisture leaving his mouth in his fervor, "might as well be enacting their sick desires on the very body of our Lord, polluting the physical body of Christ as he hangs broken from the cross! They're sick, like a cancer in humanity, and they must be cut out -"

* * *

Several things happened at once. Out in the van, three detectives were on the move, with grunts of "We got him" and "He said it" and "She did it!"

The ADA in the van had his phone out and was confirming with his boss. "It's on tape." He couldn't help but smile and gave a thumbs up.

Angela ripped the lid off Metzov's coffee and dashed the scalding hot liquid right into his face. "You twisted bastard!" she shrieked, high and loud and almost to the point of unintelligibly.

Metzov shouted in his surprise and pain, and then his hand raised high into the air and came smashing down where Angela stood --

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews will restore your faith in humanity. Or at least Jane.
> 
> (This chapter is not cut short, it's a cliffhanger)


	10. Mother and Child Reunion

Metzov shouted in his surprise and pain, and then his hand raised high into the air and came smashing down where Angela stood, or at least, where she had been standing before his eyes had been filled with acidic, fully-caffeinated coffee.

She was not there.

Instead there was a hand, rough and calloused, scarred at the center, and above all, strong as a vise as she took the priest's own momentum and used it to sweep his arm down and behind him, up his back, and to force his face into the wall, knocking a gold-plated crucifix down with the force of the impact. "Father Paul Metzov, you are under arrest," Jane said as he squealed, shouted, and called down the wrath of a pointedly reticent deity onto her head, "for multiple counts of open murder in the First degree, incitement to suicide, and failure to report threats of self-harm to the authorities. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?"

In his fury, Metzov missed the thoroughbred power of a very pissed off Detective Jane Rizzoli, bursting through his door. Angela had not, but as her daughter manhandled the priest and the handcuffs clicked tightly around his wrists, it was Vince Korsak who had an arm around Angela, pulling her away from the scene.

"Was it all right? Did I do it?" she asked, seconds from hysterical tears of success.

"You did great, Angela," Vince promised her, and unabashedly Angela cried all over his cheap suit. Vince took her outside, remaining by her side as protection, while Angela regained composure.

The lawyer, an ADA, Janie had called him, looked like it was his birthday, Christmas, and every other joyful day, all at the same time. "Mrs. Rizzoli, you were perfect. He might try entrapment, but we've got him on tape. We get a good jury, and it's a home run."

"Don't count your grounders before they roll, there, Billy Buckner," admonished Vince, calling to mind that horrible 1986 World Series.

Looking concerned, the lawyer looked back at church, as Janie shoved Metzov down the walk. His jacket was over his head, affording little anonymity thanks to his priestly attire. "I'll have you excommunicated for this," he snarled.

"Yeah, I think it'll be your turn first, _Paul_ ," retorted Jane, pushing his head down to shove him in the back of the marked Crown Victoria. She closed the door on his face and rapped the roof of the car.

No one spoke as the car drove off. "Is it always like this?" wondered Angela as the tech unhooked the wire. There would be time to take the tape off later. In a less public place.

Janie, Frost and Korsak all shared a look. "Pretty much," they said together, smiling in a way that made Angela feel safe and protected. This was why people looked at her Janie like she was a hero. This was what she did every day. If Jane noticed the difference with which her mother was looking at her, she said nothing, but for the first time in almost a week, mother and daughter shared a friendly smile.

* * *

More mentally than physically exhausted, Jane didn't argue when they ended up back at Maura's house. Her hand on Jane's lower back, Maura steered them to the house, opening the door for her girlfriend. Tired Jane smiled, "Why thank you, kind sir."

Maura swatted Jane's backside, "Get inside." She harbored hope that if she got Jane scrubbed and fed, maybe massaged, there could be at least some couch cuddling to salvage a night. Instead, Jane came to a full stop just one step inside. "What's wrong?" asked Maura, worried. Jane wasn't reaching for her gun, however, which was a good sign.

"Ma." Jane's voice was strangled, but not fearful. "Ma, what the hell? Did you cook all this?" Maura put her hands on Jane's hips and nudged her inside to see past the taller women.

Angela Rizzoli had taken over her kitchen. Unlike the horrific labeling craze a year ago ago, this time Maura's kitchen, dining room, and every available counter space was filled with food. "Janie! Maura, I thought you weren't coming back for another hour." Angela fretted a moment and then gestured with both arms. "Surprise."

Agog, Jane walked in and started surveying the food. "Ma, is that Nonna's chocolate cake?"

"And your favorite gnocchi." Pointing out the foods in turn. "And I made that salad Maura liked, and the tortellini. I couldn't remember if you liked the Alfredo or the marinara so I made both."

All the food was hand made. Nothing came out of a can here, and Maura was struck by the love Angela felt for Jane. For them. "Oh my god, Ma! You made that cannoli!" Jane all but dove for the food, shoving one in her mouth. "Maur, c'mere," she mumbled around a mouth full of cream and pastry. Obediently, Maura walked up and let Jane feed her a bite of the treat and was, apparently, too expressive. Jane froze; it was all she could do to stop from reacting, and even that wasn't all too successful: her pars lateralis was orbiting, pupils were dilating, not to mention all the other minutiae that shouted _arousal_ to those who understood the language.

Fortunately, Maura did not call attention to those things; she was too busy eating cannoli, eyes closed in sheer bliss. Just before she reopened them and let them focus, Jane took her hand away and cleared her throat, taking a step back to produce some space between them that neither really wanted. "Ma, what's all this for?"

There was silence. "Angela?" Maura asked, shaken out of her food heaven, looking around worried. Angela had dropped out of sight.

"I'm feeding your turtle from the Wednesday box." Angela held up tupperware as Jane and Maura chorused 'tortoise' as one. "Sorry, tortoise. Now, this is all for you two, so enjoy." She stood up and made as if to leave.

Jane was busy raiding the various plates, and Maura poked her in the ribs, hard. "Ow." She glowered at Maura, but asked again, "Ma, _what's_ all this for? Not who."

Twisting her hands exactly the same way Jane did, Angela looked around the room. "Alright. I'm gonna say this and you can just shut up for a second, Janie." Maura had to cover her mouth to hide the smile. The two Rizzoli women were so very alike "I talked to Father Brophy, after I nearly died." Jane groaned and started to interrupt, pointing out that a middle-aged man shouting at her and raising a hand to slap her one time was not quite as close to death as she was making it out to be. Angela was having none of that pesky accuracy, however. "Shut it! Anyway, he told me a lot and it doesn't matter, except he made me see that I wasn't fair treating you two how I did."

Mouthing 'two' at Maura, Jane walked over to her mother. "And?"

"And what?" Angela looked at Maura, who had no idea what was going on. Jane waited. Slumping, Angela muttered something Maura couldn't hear. Jane coughed and put a hand to her ear. "Alright," snapped Angela. "Fine! I'm sorry! I was wrong! Are you happy?"

Glancing over at Maura, Jane smirked. "No, Ma, I'm still pissed at you for being close-minded. And you need to apologize." Her mother spluttered, sounding just like Jane when she was upset, but Jane pointed at Maura. "To Maura, Ma."

Angela froze. "You know she's ..." Angela made a hand motion, exactly like Jane did when trying to talk about sex. It was Rizzoli Pseudo-Sign Language. Maura would not have understood, but Jane's words gave her context to put the sign into her Rizzoli lexicon.

Taking pity on her mother, Jane rolled her eyes. " _Yes_ , Ma, I know Maura's pansexual." While Jane sounded cool and collected now, her actual reaction to Maura's revelation of sexuality had included a great deal of skittishness and, as Jane put it, awkward turtles.

"Pan?"

"Later," Jane promised. "It's like bisexual, only... broader, and... there's... Never mind. Later. Point is, yeah, I know. Come on, we're best friends. We tell each other stuff."

This fact caused Angela to mutter a soft 'oh' and look between her daughter and her landlord curiously. No, suspiciously. "Would you stay, Angela?" asked Maura, smiling her best and brightest at the older woman.

"Oh, no, I shouldn't. I've caused you two too much grief already this week."

"Come on, Ma," insisted Jane. "There's way too much food for me to eat."

Slowly, Angela took off the apron and looked up at her daughter. "I love you, Janie. You know that, right?" Jane smiled warmly at her mother, but pointed at Maura insistently. "I'm sorry, Maura, I... I was wrong to say what I did." Poor Angela looked so distraught at this, Maura was not surprised that Jane stepped in to give her mother a hug. That brought on tears, and now Angela was sobbing into Jane's shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Janie! Maura! I didn't think! I didn't know!"

Jane motioned at Maura and mouthed _Come here!_ Oh! It was a group hug. Maura hurried over and Jane's hand quickly found its way to Maura's posterior, where she copped a squeeze.

* * *

Jane waited patiently at the bar, nursing her first beer. By the time her companion arrived, she was surprisingly calm. "I'll have what she's having," said Father Daniel Brophy.

"MGD 64," warned Jane, glancing at the priest. He hadn't changed into civvies, though Jane had seen him in jeans many times before. Seeing him sans collar would have been weird tonight, and the memory of how it had looked in the past made Jane think of him as just another guy. _Maybe that's all Maura saw_ , she mused. If anyone could see through the vestments, it would be her.

"That's fine. Want a booth?" That was, Jane allowed, a good idea.

They took their beers to a quiet booth away from the windows. "So," sighed Jane.

"Still pissed at me?"

"Disappointed. But... At least it's not kids."

Brophy snorted. "It was just her." At Jane's silence he explained how he had entered the priesthood at 18, going right to seminary, following a promise he'd made when his sister was a baby. "She was the only time I've broken a vow. Prior to my liaison with her, I'd always wondered in my heart why Adam ate the forbidden fruit, knowing that it would mean his banishment from the Garden of Eden. I no longer wonder. Some things, some people and the wisdom and knowledge that come with them, are worth just as much as eternal luxury without knowledge."

Staring at her beer, Jane ground her teeth. "Yeah, she's definitely one of those people." Maura just had a way of getting you to do things. If Jane found it impossible to resist, and could no longer even recall why she'd ever considered resistance, how much more a man who'd never been inoculated by previous exposure to far lesser... enticements? beauties? blandishments? goddesses?... No. Far lesser women.

"Oh, it was at my instigation, amateurish though I was about the whole thing," he was quick to add. "She thought we'd regret it." Brophy sipped the beer before saying, firmly, "I don't. I still love her, but I can never be what she needs. No future." He looked forlornly at the wall.

Suddenly her mouth was dry. She was not going to ask how he'd hooked up with Maura. Jane couldn't take that just yet. She did harbor a grudging respect for the man. He had the balls to ask one woman out in his whole life, and it was _Maura_ , and he got her. "Yeah, you told me that, Father."

The priest laughed, "Please, call me Daniel." A moment passed and he asked, "How did you...?"

Now Jane laughed, "You sure? I mean, it's a sin and all that crap."

Toying with his bottle, Brophy- _Daniel_ was thoughtful. "Love is not a sin. Love should be cherished and celebrated. You love her. That matters, the rest is just man pushing his own baggage on you." He took another sip of beer. "I'm aware of both the practical and, more importantly, the emotional and spiritual difficulties of keeping a relationship of which many others would not approve." His eyes crinkled slightly and Jane found herself smiling. She liked him.

That didn't make her ready to tell him a silly, simple, story of falling in love with Maura, and certainly not the long version that included some pretty horrible moments. Nor was she ready to tell anyone in the Church about how she'd felt that way about women before. Father Petey had, true to his word, taken that information to the grave, never judging her. "I do, you know, love her. I just ... I can't tell Ma. And I know that's killing Maura."

"She wants to love you in all ways, openly being one of them." His expression was grim, "Don't do what I did, Jane. She loves you. Give her a future with the two of you, together." He reached over, as if to touch Jane's hand, and froze midway.

Jane did not bridge the distance, and wrapped both hands around her beer. "I'm afraid," she whispered. Daniel's verbal comfort reminded her of Father Petey. He was warm, like a mug of cocoa with a shot of whiskey on a bitterly cold day. "I don't want to lose my family."

Nodding, Daniel took his hand back and leaned away, giving Jane the illusion of more space. "Your brothers will understand. I dare say your partners will, too. And your mother... Angela has a good heart." There he stopped. "I've already talked to her about the boys. I think if you give her time, she'll realize Maura is as wonderful as we do."

"God I hope not!" blurted Jane, and she and Daniel started snickering. Within a moment they were laughing so hard, the bartender was giving them the fish eye. "Thanks, Daniel," she sighed, feeling a weight lifted off her chest.

As they departed, together, Daniel smiled. "You should come to my sermons sometime. Or if I'm too close to home, I can recommend another that wouldn't clash with your convictions."

She agreed to consider that, and they walked down the street to the parting of their ways. "Daniel, how did you ... After you broke it off, how did you stop feeling like crap about doing something you knew was wrong?"

Like a statue, the priest stood still and looked at nothing. "The Church teaches us about right and wrong, Jane. But it also teaches us forgiveness for those who cannot achieve perfection." He smiled sadly at Jane, "A very wise agnostic told me that." Daniel tilted his head and turned away, walking down the street.

Jane watched him until he disappeared into the night. Digging out her phone, she dialed the number she knew by heart, speed dial or not. "Hi, I'll be there in half an hour. And Maura... I love you."

 **The End**... **For Now**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Having written this at what is, for me, breakneck speed, it’s twice the length of our last effort (see ‘That’s Really Nice’ posted at Googs’ page), this felt like a Tolkeinian epic saga. In part, that’s because this is a heavy drama, with weighty moments. We finished the first draft a couple hours before the season two finale aired, and I announced that we were NOT directly addressing that in this fic. I kind of lied. We mention it in passing, and fully intend to come back to it in another story in this ‘world.’ Oh yes, we have a sequel in mind, and a prequel which you can read at Googs’ page. If anything, I feel I (I, not we) neglected the comedy skills of the actresses, and hope to correct that in the future.
> 
> Obviously this story is densely packed, and it touches home for me. When I was in my teens, a friend tried to kill herself and I was one of the people who got her to the ER in time. I never asked if it was because she was gay (we both were totally closeted at the time) but she said that knowing someone cared made a difference. Like Angela said in the prequel, I don’t know you, but I care about you and I love you. So please stick around.
> 
> Visit [thetrevorproject.org](http://thetrevorproject.org) and [itgetsbetter.org](http://itgetsbetter.org). Watch the videos. Read the words. Remember we care and want you to stay.
> 
> Reviews will fuel our passion to write that sequel.
> 
> See you in 2012!


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